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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/26323021">Mass of the Traitor</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Canis_cosmos/pseuds/Canis_cosmos'>Canis_cosmos</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Hannibal (TV)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Angst, Complete, Hannibal Lecter Loves Will Graham, M/M, Poetry (Not Mine), Smut, This is a terrifying revelation, WTF is Will supposed to do now?, s02 canon divergence</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-09-06</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-10-18</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 12:09:07</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Explicit</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>7</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>25,053</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/26323021</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Canis_cosmos/pseuds/Canis_cosmos</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Picking up from the end of Season 2 episode 08, Will's POV.</p><p>Hannibal stops Will from killing Clark Ingram. As Will listens to Hannibal whispering through the chrysalis, his empathy connects the dots and he finally understands what motivates the doctor.</p><p> This changes everything.</p><p>- </p><p>Ok, this WAS going to be just 4 chapters, but your lovely comments have made me reconsider, and Will still has more growing to do, so I've written another 3 for you gorgeous peeps!</p><p>-</p><p>Chapters 2, 4, 5 and 7 are NSFW.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Will Graham/Hannibal Lecter</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>128</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>645</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. Chapter 1</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><ul class="associations">


        <li>
            Inspired by

            <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/705068">[art] Klimt's 'The Kiss' Variation</a> by SketchyArkhive.
        </li>

    </ul></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Will’s heart jackhammers in his chest, denied righteous retribution, and now Hannibal’s hand is cradling his face. With the smell of horse guts fouling the air, the scent of cologne wafting from Hannibal’s wrist is almost comforting; his invasion of Will’s space though… ‘comfort’ is hardly the right word. Hannibal’s face mere inches from his own, his features impossibly close.<br/>
<br/>
     “With all my knowledge and intrusion, I could never entirely predict you. I can feed the caterpillar, whisper through the chrysalis, but what hatches?” The words are soft impacts against his skin before the final hammer blow.<br/>
 “...Follows its own nature, and is beyond me.” His conclusion is delivered with a small chuckle of pride.<br/>
      <br/>
      The sentiment is equal parts relief and razor. He’s not being remade into Hannibal; he’s being made into something else (<em>worse?). </em> Will overcomes his distress in fits and starts, dragging his gaze up in a skittery zigzag across the other man’s face. From the faint shadow of stubble on Hannibal’s jaw, passed the small smile made enormous by its proximity, to the stern ridge of his cheekbone and <em>one last push </em>to meet the crushing affection in Hannibal’s half lidded eyes.<br/>
   <br/>
    Warmth seeps into his cheeks from Hannibal’s hand. Anger and confusion and misery boil in a messy broth with his intestines.</p><p>     How, after everything, has it come to this?</p><p>     Hannibal talking <em>him </em>down from murder. His hand tingles with the ghost of the gun, the war with his trigger finger crushed into an empty fist.</p><p>     Hannibal isn’t moving back, he’s still too close, drinking in the sight of him, and the mongoose in Will can’t seem to escape the hypnotic cobra. <em>Maybe if I just close my eyes, it will all go away. He will go away. </em>He lets his eyes slide shut. Hannibal’s thumb massages his jaw where it meets his ear. He isn’t going away.</p><p>   When he opens his eyes again he finds Hannibal’s gaze has dropped to his lips, and Will’s empathy catches a glimpse of elusive emotion in the dark furnaces: covetous restraint, hunger.</p><p>    <em>Oh.</em></p><p>    The sudden epiphany bursts through Will’s mind, a wind that shocks the leaves of a tree into perfect symmetry. Unwittingly standing at the right angle at the precise moment, Will sees Hannibal’s underlying design, and pieces rearrange themselves – finally – into a complete picture.</p><p>     Will’s eyes widen against his best attempts to remain absolutely still. Hannibal sees, must sense some shift, because he steps away and releases Will from his paralysis. The doctor shifts into his normal mannerisms as he moves to consider Clark Ingram.</p><p>     The two men (<em>killers)</em>start talking, but Will can’t bring himself to tune in. He wobbles on his feet, dazed by the rapid restructuring in his perception of the last several months.</p><p><br/>
    <em>I don’t find you that interesting.<br/>
    You will.</em></p><p><em>  Did you just rubber stamp me? </em> <em><br/>
   </em> <em>Our conversations can proceed unobstructed by paperwork. </em></p><p>
  <em>   I feel like I dragged you into my world.<br/>
  I got here on my own. But I appreciate the company.  </em>
</p><p>Even earlier that very night:</p><p><em>   I'm alone in that darkness.<br/>
</em> <em>You're not alone, Will. I'm standing right beside you.</em></p><p>      The idea of standing in the darkness and suddenly becoming aware of Hannibal’s silent presence was not a comforting one. He had thought it was a veiled threat.</p><p>     It had been so much more than a threat.</p><p>     The horizons of Will’s world rush inwards to confine him to a single fate.</p><p>    Will continues to stand in place with a slight tremble, blankly looking into the middle distance as too many emotions cascade through him. Too many to categorise, too many to separate.</p><p>    Hannibal turns back from the shivering Ingram - <em>those dead horse guts will be cold by now</em>- and has the temerity to lay a hand on his shoulder. “Perhaps we should alert Jack.”</p><p>  Will nods vacantly and shrugs the hand off. He takes a few steps backwards, eyes flicking up to meet Hannibal’s, <em>catch and release. </em>He pulls his phone from his pocket and walks away. It’s all he can do not to bolt for the door and the forest beyond.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>    When Jack arrives, steaming from the nostrils in the cold night air, like a very pissed off bull, Will lets Hannibal do most of the talking. Jack tries to reel Will into the conversation, but he’s not having it. He retreats behind a surly scowl, leaving the two overbearing men to engage in their deceptively friendly battle of wills - battle <em>for </em>Will.</p><p>     It’s all poison, darkness spun into silk, lies and hidden truths masquerading in polite conversation.</p><p>    No one’s dead this evening, so there’s that. But if Hannibal hadn’t stopped him, forensics would be here too and maybe he could have gotten a ride back with one of them. Or in the back of a cop car. Instead it’s just the local sheriff’s officers, Jack, and Hannibal. At this point, he’s not sure what would be worse, being driven back to his car at Quantico by Hannibal or by Jack.</p><p>    If he goes with Jack he’ll have to fend off endless questions that he doesn’t have the answers to or the energy for. If he goes with Hannibal he’ll be trapped in a small metal box with the suffocating individual who has – impressively – just found a way to become even more oppressive.</p><p>     Before Will can reach a decision one way or the other, Jack reminds him that choice is not a luxury afforded to Will.</p><p>     “I need to bring Ingram in. Sherriff Holt’s agreed to follow with Bernardone. Hannibal can take you back to your car.”</p><p>     Never mind Will just solved another case for him, Jack’s insisting, in his unspoken way, that Will make good use of the time. Will remembers earlier in the day:</p><p>
  <em>  I know what it’s like to point at a killer and have no one listen.<br/>
   You pointed in the wrong direction.</em>
</p><p>   So convincing, Will had even believed he meant it for a moment, felt the sting of betrayal. Jack is every bit the talented liar that Hannibal is. That Will is.</p><p>  Will feels sick. He just nods.</p><p>  Will tries to keep still on the journey back toward Quantico, fighting not to fidget out of his skin. The radio is playing, and Will would believe that Hannibal is lost in his thoughts and has forgotten anyone else is in the car, except that with his new insight, he knows this is merely part of his façade. Even without direct observation, Hannibal is aware of his every breath, every microexpression, probably every bead of perspiration that gathers on his skin.</p><p>    On the US-17, twenty minutes into the drive, Will reaches his limit.</p><p>   “Pull over. Pull over the car.”</p><p>     The car slows as it approaches a grit track leading off the road. The headlights reveal a mismatched row of mailboxes to one side of the turn-off. The car is still rolling to a stop as Will scrabbles for the handle and lurches from the vehicle. He stumbles to the edge of the field and vomits into a ploughed ridge.</p><p>    He falls to his knees, heaving, because even though there’s nothing left to expel, this new understanding in him still needs to be exorcised. It won’t leave him, however much he retches, however violently his stomach spasms. <em>Please, please get it out of me.<br/>
</em></p><p>He had thought he was done with revelations. When he realised who Hannibal really was, the scale of his design, he thought he was beyond surprise. He was wrong.</p><p>     Hannibal is standing beside him. Warm fingers ghost against the nape of his neck, exposed to the night air as he pants down at the ground, his belly finally admitting that the uncomfortable sensation won't be purged this way.</p><p>    “Will.” A bottle of water is held before him, and he takes it with resignation. Unscrewing the lid he takes grateful gulps, the spring water refreshing despite being warmer than the night air around them.</p><p>     After drinking half the bottle he rinses his mouth out properly and spits onto the ground before sneaking a glance at Hannibal. The man remains silent, staring out across the field as if finding some beauty in the ordered rows of tilled soil. All Will sees is the endless destruction of a mono-crop cycle. He squeezes his eyes shut and wants to cry.</p><p>     Hannibal doesn’t just want to dismantle Will, wind him up and watch him go.<br/>
     Hannibal believes he is in love with Will.<br/>
     Hannibal shapes reality until he has exactly what he wants.<br/>
     Hannibal won’t be satisfied until every part of Will belongs to him.</p><p>     The most sickening wretched part of this: Will sees now, and to Will, seeing it means feeling it too.</p><p>     In amongst all of the other overwhelming emotions, this new one hurts most of all.</p><p>    The fingers resting lightly on the back of his neck might as well be a collar; barely touching his skin, they brand him.</p><p>    After a moment, the fingers withdraw. Will accepts the proffered hand and is helped shakily to his feet.</p><p>    “Delayed reaction?” Hannibal asks. “Or an unexpected bout of motion sickness?”</p><p>    “You could say that.” Both apply, if emotional motion sickness is a thing.</p><p>    Hannibal purses his lips, touches the back of his fingers against Will’s forehead, before stroking the hair away from his sweaty brow. Will allows it, keeping his eyes studiously on the horizon. The caress sends new and unprecedented shocks through his body; his disloyal body and his treacherous mind, responding to this man in this way.</p><p>    “I don’t feel up to driving.” Will blurts. He can feel Hannibal’s surprise, it mirrors his own.</p><p>    “You can stay at mine, I will drive you back to your car in the morning.”</p><p><em>   Will the dogs be okay? They’ll be okay.</em> “Okay.” Stronger adjectives don’t seem possible at the moment. “Thanks.”</p><p> </p><p>   Hannibal helps Will out of his coat in the hallway, visibly pensive and strangely quiet as he hangs it up.</p><p>    Will can’t spare the energy to think about it. Is he in shock? Why is he here? He hates this place. He doesn’t want to be anywhere else. He hates this man. He doesn’t want to be with anyone else.</p><p>    “Do you have a toothbrush I can use? I still…” he makes a face and gestures to his mouth.</p><p>   “Of course. This way.” They leave their shoes at the foot of the stairs, and Will is led upstairs to a glossy and sterile bathroom. Reaching into a dresser drawer, Hannibal retrieves a new tube of toothpaste and an electric toothbrush from an expensive looking box.</p><p>     “Um. That looks new. I don’t wanna…” He trails off.</p><p>    “Replaceable heads.” Hannibal explains succinctly. “Take your time to freshen up. I will be in the kitchen, preparing something light for your stomach.”</p><p>    “Thanks.” Will mumbles at his shirt collar.</p><p>   Hiding in the bathroom is a good plan. It allows him to be here and also not here. Well practiced at ghosting himself in the mirror, he avoids looking up as he cleans the dirt from under his nails; he had been digging his fingers into the hard ground as if trying to dig in and root himself as he voided his stomach. He doesn’t meet his own eyes as he brings the toothbrush to his teeth, stares into his mouth as he rids his tongue of the sour taste of lingering bile.</p><p>    How long can he hide in here? With the white walls and polished white wood trappings, it looks like a showroom. He could believe he is in a waiting room, seeing this bathroom in a home décor magazine. If he looks to the margin the prices would mark the fixtures as hilariously out of his range.</p><p>    But the margin is out through that door, and the price of this bathroom is only his ever-loving soul. God help him.</p><p>    Yeah, right, God’s help would be the ceiling caving in. <em>Come on big guy, if that’s all you can give me, I’ll take it.</em></p><p>    The ceiling remains resolutely in place. Of course.<br/>
   </p><p> </p><p>      Will can’t remember what they ate. Only that it was delicious and soothing, and was somehow complimented by the remaining traces of toothpaste. More importantly, it lined his stomach enough that Hannibal is now permitting him a whiskey. <em>Permitting?<br/>
</em></p><p>Will takes the tumbler and drops gracelessly into a chair by the fire. <em><br/>
</em></p><p>  He never accepted that Hannibal was going to destroy him, or at least was determined to go down fighting. This though… how does one fight against love?</p><p>    <em>Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that</em>. Well, the opposite doesn’t seem to be true, hate apparently can’t drive out love, his hatred of Hannibal doesn’t daunt the man at all.</p><p>    The main problem is, Will doesn’t have it in him to drive out love. That’s why dogs are his weakness and his reprieve. Humans don’t offer love so easily, he’s not sure he’s ever been loved by another human being - except maybe his father, but he’d be guessing.</p><p>     Dogs were innocent. Dogs were good. Manipulative sadistic cannibalistic serial killers were their very antithesis. How many dogs would it take to balance out a serial killer? <em>It’s not a goddamn equation!<br/>
</em></p><p>    Hannibal is quietly sketching across from him. The way his eyes will occasionally dart up make Will realise he’s not just stealing covert glances, the man is drawing him.</p><p>    <em>Fascination.</em>That’s what he inspires in Hannibal. People have been fascinated before, sure, in a clinically detached way. ‘If I could just have an hour of your time…’ yes, they want to open him up and dissect him for an hour then throw him to the kerb again. That’s not what Hannibal wants. These dark eyes burn into Will every time they skate over his flesh. <em>Obsession.<br/>
</em></p><p>“Thank you Will.” Hannibal murmurs softly, acknowledging that Will has frozen in place and choosing to interpret it as acquiescence instead of discomfort. “But if you wouldn’t mind looking down at the fire as you were before.” Will feels himself flush, because if he obliges, he is effectively agreeing to pose. Of course. Hannibal always wants his complicity. He compromises by frowning as he turns back to the flames. <em>Deal with it, that’s what you get for sketching without an eraser.<br/>
</em></p><p>But of course, Hannibal isn’t the kind of man to use an eraser. Every mark he makes is permanent.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. Chapter 2</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Thank you so much for your kudos and comments, they are shiny precious jewels that I treasure and hoard up and sleep on like a dragon ☺</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p> 
</p><p>    The dancing flames work their magic, and Will is lost to them while his mind tries to talk himself out of something his body has already accepted. Maybe Hannibal knows too, because this is the longest he’s gone without invasive questions or preaching some kind of sermon. </p><p>    As Will comes back to himself, he realises that Hannibal has put the pencil and pad down, and is staring into the fire over steepled fingers. He looks softer somehow, lost in his own reverie. The harsh planes of his face are softened by the shifting light, the muscles relaxed, mouth content, eyes a little sad. Almost like a normal human being, if he didn’t possess that eldritch beauty, and exert the inexorable pull of a black hole. </p><p>     “Jack-” Will starts to say. <em>Fuck</em>; treacherous mouth, he hadn’t consciously decided to speak yet.</p><p>    The beam of Hannibal’s gaze swings round to lock onto him. “What of him?” </p><p>     Will swallows. <em>Quick, say something about ice fishing. </em>“He… still suspects you.” <em>God damn it.</em></p><p>     Hannibal, already frugal with his movements, goes completely still, and then he smiles; <em>there </em>is that deadly predator Will remembers. The deadly predator that would of course answer such a statement by quoting Goethe. </p><p>    “‘Wood burns because it has the proper stuff in it; and a man becomes famous because he has the proper stuff in him.’ Chilton fit the Ripper profile, and the physical evidence was damning. However,being acquainted with him, I admit I too find it hard to credit him as having the ‘proper stuff’.” </p><p>     “Yeah, we all know Chilton’s got a spine like a wet blanket.” Will snaps, irritated both with himself and with Hannibal dancing around the subject<em>. </em>“<em>I mean</em>, Jack wants <em>me </em>to catch <em>you</em>.”</p><p>   “You should always say what you mean Will.” Hannibal advises, his voice low and velvet. </p><p>    Will shivers despite himself, despite the fire. <em>When did fear start to feel… good? </em>This fear has a different taste to it than normal, it’s warmer and spreading out from his belly instead of the cold fear that lodges in his throat.</p><p>    “And why tell me?” Hannibal asks into Will’s prolonged silence. “Are you planning to play both sides? Turn yourself into a double agent? Or would that be triple agent?”</p><p>   “I think the term is a ‘re-doubled agent’.” </p><p>   “Changing allegiance?”</p><p>    “Compromised.” </p><p>    Hannibal’s lips twist into bitter smile. He stands and Will leaps to his feet, to be met by an amused quirk of an eyebrow. <em>Ok. Relax. Maybe he’s not planning to knife me.</em></p><p>      His heart rate is jacked again, his palms going clammy. Hannibal approaches slowly; after all, Will had just startled like a frightened animal. </p><p>      As he had earlier in the night, Hannibal waives propriety and doesn’t stop his advance until he is well into Will’s personal space. This time Will fights the fear thundering through his arteries and keeps his eyes on Hannibal. The maroon eyes rove over his features, nostrils flare slightly and Will knows he is being sampled. He can’t bring himself to protest. He wonders what Hannibal’s nose can detect from Will’s current ‘bouquet’. </p><p>    Whatever his nose tells him has Hannibal’s head tilting to one side, his pupils dilating and an almost shy smile pulling his lips up. “You have compromised me too, Will.” Hannibal reveals softly, reaching out to cup his face again. “Completely.” The timbre sends a frisson of heat through him. He guides Will’s face forward until there are only millimetres between them. </p><p>     “Irreparably.” His chin is lifted to close the remaining distance; Will watches Hannibal’s eyes close. </p><p>     His lips are broad and thick and warm and smooth. Will’s eyelids stutter as shock wars with the press of Hannibal’s soft mouth imprinting against his own, gentle but resolute. The mouth pulls back, hot breath against Will’s moistened lips. </p><p>    “Irrevocably.” Hannibal’s mouth returns.</p><p>    Will’s eyes close as a tide of warm foaming heat rises up through his body, dissolving his paralysis. His bones turn to liquid, and he melts into Hannibal’s body, hands wrapping under his arms and reaching up to hold onto the back of his shoulders. Hannibal tugs him closer with a jerk, and he licks against Will’s lips. <em>Asking permission.<br/>
</em></p><p>Will parts his lips and opens himself to taste and be tasted. Salt, whiskey; a little sweet, a little umami; complex, decadent, <em>delicious.<br/>
</em></p><p>He traces down one side of Hannibal’s tongue before stretching to lick into Hannibal’s mouth in return, pulling back to suck on his upper lip before rolling back in for another slide of wet friction. </p><p>    Will can hardly breathe, hardly remembers it’s necessary. </p><p>    The kiss deepens, slick and intoxicating. Hannibal’s hand in his hair massages his scalp, the other holding him more firmly by the jawbone, almost painfully tight. Will bites first, into the generous meat of Hannibal’s lower lip, and the delighted growl it elicits goes straight to his groin<em>. Oh...</em></p><p>     <em>Jesus</em>. He’s dizzy and he might have just moaned. <em>Christ. </em>He never expected to be this affected.</p><p>     Enraptured at Will’s mouth, Hannibal is slowly bearing down on him, <em>as ever, </em>and Will allows himself to be pushed back down into the armchair. He hardly notices until Hannibal sinks to his knees between Will’s legs, and seizes his hips to pull their bodies flush, bending him back into the fold of the chair.</p><p>    The entire experience rushes through Will’s synapses in a maelstrom of sensation, inciting emotional pandemonium, but his cock is stiffening and trapped against Hannibal’s abdomen and it’s absurd and it feels <em>so </em><em>good.</em>  </p><p>     Hannibal sets to purposefully nipping along his jawline, occasionally trapping flesh, occasionally stubble, seasoning his skin with a fusion of dull and sharp pain. Uncompromising fingers at his jaw turn his head to expose the column of Will’s throat. Will digs his blunt nails into Hannibal’s back; obstructed by fabric they rise up to find skin and claw at his neck. Will’s body has started moving of its own volition, writhing, grinding up, and it feels <em>so </em><em>fucking good.</em></p><p>      He moans again, this time dispensing with the shame altogether and snatching at Hannibal’s jacket to strip it off his shoulders.</p><p>    The grip on his jaw loosens as Hannibal accepts the prompt, but he refuses to abandon his investigation of Will’s jugular as he reaches between their bodies to undress.</p><p>     The hands - <em>Hannibal’s hands - </em>burrow between them as far as Hannibal’s naval, the fingers wriggle as the jacket buttons are slipped free, tantalising close to where Will is trapped and swelling. The hands come away again and the jacket is pulled off behind Hannibal’s back. Will finds his fingers curling in Hannibal's hair.</p><p>    Hands slip between them again, slowly unfastening waistcoat buttons. There are more buttons this time, and the knuckles move lower and lower until they undulate against Will’s hardness. He gasps at the extra pressure, incendiary sparks shooting through his body, the precise movement as the fingers work at their task... <em>and weren’t those hands just made for precision.</em></p><p>     The vest buttons conquered, the hands vanish, the waistcoat opens; Hannibal sheds the next layer. Will’s eyes follow the doctor’s clothes as they’re discarded with unprecedented indifference. The sight drives Will to yank Hannibal’s shirt collar up and slide the tie free, sending it in a fluttering arc across the room.</p><p>      Moving to nip at the other side of Will’s neck, Hannibal returns his hands between them for his shirt. Will keens as <em>need </em>gallops through him, and mortified that he might start making more embarrassing noises, latches onto a passing association.</p><p>     “I thought of you-” Will babbles, his breath hitching as Hannibal brushes his Adam’s apple with his teeth, “-when I was dressing… for my trial.”</p><p>      Hannibal reaches the lower buttons of his shirt, parallel now with Will’s groin, knuckles rippling against Will’s erection. Will strains up to press tighter, “Ah-h.”</p><p>    Licking up the line of his carotid artery, Hannibal unhitches the last button, but the fingers linger, continuing to massage where Will has become fully hard; each beat of his pulse enough to tease with a tantalising shiver. “Did you?” he hums, approval in his voice, as the kneading becomes rubbing.</p><p>   Will whimpers and wets his lips, forcing himself to answer. “I imagined we were… dressing at the same time. I could picture it  - ah - so vividly… it… it was a surprise to see you in a different suit… in the court-room...”</p><p>    A jagged breath rips from Will as Hannibal twists his fingers and works a final button free: the button to Will’s black slacks. The hands vanish and Will’s hips buck up into Hannibal’s abdomen, seeking lost pressure. </p><p>     Hannibal’s mouth covers his and Will welcomes his tongue, determined to drink him in. The shirt needs to be gone, but Hannibal is still removing his cufflinks. <em>Fucking cufflinks. </em>Will tears his mouth free from the kiss to crane forward and snap his teeth into Hannibal’s neck. The trapezius muscle stretches under the bite as Hannibal gathers the material of the shirt and peels it back off his arms, shedding his final layer in what had been the most frustrating strip tease of Will’s life.</p><p>      From this angle, with his teeth buried in Hannibal’s neck, Will realises just how effective those stuffy suits are as a disguise. <em>Clark fucking Kent and… nope. Not even gonna think it.<br/>
</em></p><p>Will’s fingers brush across Hannibal’s skin to explore the tightly packed muscles as Hannibal crowds him back into the armchair, one hand squeezing Will’s cock through his trousers. </p><p>    A guttural noise escapes Will, <em>have Hannibal’s hands always been so</em>… the thought dissolves. Deft fingers pinch the fly and lower the trap, freeing Will from the confines of his slacks. </p><p>     Will groans and pulls his teeth out of Hannibal’s shoulder, finding not just crescent indentations but also a nasty suck bruise he hadn’t been aware of imparting.</p><p>    Rearing back to sit upright on his knees, Hannibal hauls Will up by the nape of the neck, pulling him towards his body and arching him back, unbalancing him. Will grips onto Hannibal’s biceps, eyes widening; Hannibal is glowering back into Will’s eyes, articulating a snarl his lips won’t admit to. The other hand delves into his open pants and grasps the most private part of him, <em>no – he took that months ago.<br/>
</em></p><p>Skin presses against skin as Hannibal wraps his long fingers around Will’s shaft. He trembles with the resounding intimacy of it, invasion and surrender. A small hitch in Hannibal’s breath as he absorbs the shape and feel of Will’s cock in his hand. Hannibal doesn’t shift his grip, black eyes still burning, and Will feels his eyebrows climb his forehead in deprivation. His breaths are coming shallower now. </p><p>
  <em>     Please, please. Oh god. (Do I want this, do I really want this?) Oh god I fucking do. What the fuck is happening to me? Please please please.</em>
  <em><br/>
</em>
</p><p>Still without sliding, Hannibal begins to vary the pressure of his fingers in inquisitive ripples. Will grits his teeth, his jaw bunching, irregular tremors quivering through his belly. <em><br/>
</em></p><p>
  <em>   Oh god. Oh fuck! I’m not going to beg. I’m not going to. I fucking won’t.</em>
</p><p>     With unblinking eyes, <em>observing, cataloguing</em>, Hannibal leans in and kisses Will chastely on the lips. There is very little warmth in the gaze; plenty of heat, and a little awe, but nothing of warmth. </p><p>      Drawing away to study him, yet still occupying his entire field of vision, Hannibal swipes the head of Will’s cock with his thumb to gather precum, following in sequence with his fingers. Will is pretty sure he’s never produced a noise quite as desperate as the one that just crawled out his throat.</p><p>    Wrapping his fingers again around Will’s length and using his body’s natural lubrication, Hannibal slowly begins to pump. Will moans, and Hannibal takes his weight as his body sags. Pulsing beats of warm silken shivers wrack through Will’s body. </p><p>      Hannibal brings their mouths together for another taste, then recedes again to scrutinise the tumble of emotions in Will’s eyes, emotions Will can’t understand, but can feel spilling across his face.</p><p>    A mounting standing wave of pleasure, rising in troughs and peaks, building and – <em>ah – </em>sloshing into a different gratification as Hannibal pursues a new rhythm with light twists and flicks of his wrist, throwing his thoughts into glorious mindless disarray. He’s panting nonsense: half formed words, whines and gasps.</p><p>    When he squeezes his eyes shut Hannibal growls his name, raw with emotion that Will has never heard from the man before, and <em>oh god </em>the edge is in sight. His eyes snap open and Will garbles out some kind of warning, digging his nails into Hannibal’s triceps. The cage of fingers at the back of his neck tightens in response. </p><p>    Hannibal brings their lips closer, almost-but-not touching as every nuance of his expressions are recorded. Another low rumble, “Come for me, Will.” </p><p>    <em>Oh fu… </em>Ecstasy surges through him, he shudders, limbs straining taut, a cry torn from his lips as Hannibal keeps stroking, and the glorious visceral ache goes on and on for a timeless pocket of eternity. </p><p>     Darkness encroaches the edges of his vision, and Will doesn’t care.</p><p>     In the rapt and scalding gaze of his enemy, Will dies the little death.</p><p> </p><p>  “Beautiful.” </p><p>    Light butterfly kisses across his eyelids, the bridge of his nose, his eyebrows. Gentle and worshipful. Between slow blinks, Will re-focuses his vision on Hannibal’s eyes; the warmth has returned. He kisses his mouth softly, like Will is something precious.</p><p>   Will is still stunned. His lips kiss back anyway, his body still more willing than his mind. </p><p>   “You are beautiful, Will.”</p><p>    It’s nice to hear, but Will doesn’t see it. On the way to the guest bedroom, he pauses by the drawing Hannibal had sketched of him by the fireside; for a moment he sees it, maybe. </p><p>   He also sees, properly for the first time, the deep cuts stitched closed on Hannibal’s wrists, and his mind shies away with his eyes. </p><p>  Hannibal pulls his shirt back on, doing it up as he leads the way up the stairs, saying something about towels and showers and making himself at home. Will can't look him in the eye, can barely do more than emit a strangled grunt to let Hannibal know he's heard. He's dying to remove his own shirt, contaminated with the evidence of what has just passed between them.</p><p>    "My room is at the end of the hall and to the left. If you need anything don't hesitate." There is nothing salacious in Hannibal's tone. If not for the sticky mess drying on Will's front, he could almost believe he had fallen asleep by the fire and dreamt the whole thing. Intuitively, Hannibal doesn't linger, and Will ducks into the guest room and shuts the door behind him. </p><p>   If only other doors were so easy to shut. He fears though, that some doors - once opened - can never be re-sealed. </p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0003"><h2>3. Chapter 3</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Poor confused Will... all tied up in knots.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p> </p><p>It takes Will a while to convince himself that he can safely venture to the bathroom without finding his host lurking in the corridor beyond. He had not been able to hear Hannibal’s retreating footsteps, and has a vision of him still standing halfway down the hall, wrapped in that curious stillness with which he analyses specimens of interest.</p><p>   He pulls the door open slowly. The house is tranquil, the hall lit only by a table lamp on the landing. On the floor by his door lies a folded t-shirt and pyjama bottoms. He dry swallows his fear, seeing evidence that in that quiet space of time where he had convinced himself he was being foolish, Hannibal had in fact been moving soundlessly through the house. He picks up the t-shirt, creeps to the bathroom and locks the door.</p><p>     He rips off his shirt. He wants to burn it.  Instead, he rolls it into a ball around the stain of shame and throws it roughly on the floor. It’s stupid, but he lowers a heel onto it and grinds down, imagining it’s Hannibal’s skull. The next moment he imagines the crumpled shirt is his own face, and stamps on it with three strikes of his heel.</p><p>   The muted thumps are as satisfying as they are loud: not very; the faint noise brings a surge of distress, anxiety that Hannibal might hear. Might come to investigate.</p><p>     He clenches his teeth and breathes out as quietly as possible, his eyes stinging. He wants to shower; can’t fathom being naked in this house right now. He goes to the sink, shaking, and turns on the hot water. There is a large folded towel on the bleached wood dresser; it hadn’t been there when he had cleaned his teeth and he glowers at it with condemnation.</p><p>     When the mirror clouds with steam he goes to the dresser and picks up the towel by one of its corners and drags it across the floor to the sink. <em>Floor’s clean enough to eat off anyway.<br/></em></p><p>     He unzips his trousers but doesn’t lower them. He uses one corner of the towel as a flannel, soaking it in the scalding water and lifts his limp penis free to wash it before securing it back out of sight – <em>where it should have stayed all evening</em> – then scrubbing fiercely at his chest and abdomen and neck. The water cleans his skin; the towel scours it off, exposing fresh reddened flesh in its wake. </p><p>    Even if he had taken a real shower, he doubts he would feel clean. A hundred baths couldn’t clean the sticky mess out of Will’s head. The t-shirt smells of fabric conditioner and Hannibal. He grits his teeth again, and tears do begin to spill. <em>I’m not crying. My eyes are just watering.<br/></em></p><p>He doesn’t want this. <em>No, that’s not quite true</em>. He doesn’t want to want this. <em><br/></em></p><p>He can’t bring himself to put on the t-shirt, has nothing else to wear. His coat is downstairs.</p><p>    The exit is downstairs.</p><p>     Will had asked to stay at Hannibal’s, had told him about Jack, had opened his mouth for Hannibal’s tongue, had rutted up into him, had started to undress him… all of that had been Will. He grips the edge of the sink with white knuckles.</p><p>    <em>This can’t be happening. This can’t be my life.<br/></em></p><p>   He could run. Drive to the West Coast, or Canada, leave the country, leave the continent. Start a new life on the other side of the planet; New Zealand is meant to be lovely. But he had looked into the aching chasm of Hannibal’s love, and now it would always be there, gaping over his shoulder. That might still be better though, than giving in? He had grown accustomed to the pit of depression, the chill of loneliness, the taint of exclusion; he could weather the ghost pain of amputated love.</p><p>    He unlocks the bathroom door, pauses with his ear against the gloss finished-wood. Silence, but that could mean anything; the house colludes with its inhabitant.</p><p>    He pulls the door open a crack, and then wider, checking both ways down the corridor. He pads down the stairs as silently as he can manage, keeping to the edges of the steps in the hopes it will prevent creaking. The sturdy house seems disinclined to betray his own movements, for which he is grateful, and he collects his shoes and reaches the front hall in relative discretion.</p><p>     He pulls his coat on, grateful for the smoother polyester interior against his bare skin when he considers the rough wool exterior. He sits down to put his shoes on, fingers shaking again, breathing quietly through his mouth as he tries to calm his heart rate.</p><p>     He stands and reaches for the latch.</p><p>    “Is that really what you want?” Will winces and snaps around to face the figure standing at the edge of the light, “To be alone in that darkness?”</p><p>    Will shakes his head. “I don’t know.”</p><p>    Hannibal takes a few steps closer, he is wearing plaid pyjama pants and a knitted sweater. The angle of light shifts on his face as he approaches; his face is still, but the moving shadows cast him as curious, then searching, then sad.   </p><p>     “I had thought some space might do you good, but I see now it leaves you unmoored. Come back to me.” He offers his hand out, not sideways for a handshake but palm down, reassuring.</p><p>    Cold air seeps under the door. Will thinks he must look like a hobo in his bare chest and coat. He tries to see in Hannibal the dark skeletal figure of his nightmares, but all he can see is warm flesh and blood and an enduring invitation. His heart smites in his chest and he sucks his lips between his teeth. He reaches back, even as his body angles away, and Hannibal grips his fingers and gently pulls him in to his arms.</p><p>      Will rests his hands on Hannibal’s waist and lowers his forehead onto his shoulder. Hannibal holds one hand to the small of his back, and rubs small soothing circles over his spine with the other.</p><p>     “I don’t know what I’m doing.” Will whispers. “This… wasn’t something I ever could have predicted.”</p><p>     Hannibal makes an amused hum that Will feels echo in his chest cavity. “And I never could have predicted you. But a predictable life is a miserable lot.” He waits a beat, and when Will remains tense, he adds, “Would you like to talk about this, Will?”</p><p>    “No. Please. That’s why I wanted to go, to have space, to think, I can’t talk about this until I understand.”</p><p>   “Talking can help-”</p><p>    Will cuts him off with a harsh laugh, but his fingers dig into Hannibal’s sweater to ward him from pulling away. “Not when I’m trying to separate my feelings from yours.”</p><p>   “Very well. I’ll not force the issue. But come back to my room and-”</p><p>   “No. Not your room.” Will interrupts again. Hannibal’s hand hesitate briefly in its comforting rotations, then resume, waiting for Will to come to a decision. “But… maybe you would share the guest room, with me?”</p><p>    Is it stupid? Yes, on a number of levels. But right now there is a downpour in his body and being held is… helping. Being held in Hannibal’s room would be too much, too much like being consumed.</p><p>      “I can do that.” Hannibal murmurs into the back of his neck. He brings a hand up to briefly squeeze comfort into Will’s nape, then takes his hand and turns without angling for eye contact. He leads him back up the stairs without making him take off his shoes.</p><p>    Will doesn’t sleep. He lies on his side with Hannibal pressed against his back, eyes wide and staring into the darkened corners of the room, suspended between a disconcerting lightness and a crushing heaviness. A fever dream where the sense of scale has shifted and common principles have inverted.</p><p>    Hannibal’s breathing is soft and regular, and the arm thrown over Will’s ribcage is lax with the weight of unconsciousness. Will works his lips between his teeth. The contact might be all that keeps him from bursting, dispersing like curry powder clapped in the air. The contact is also the cause of his distress.</p><p>    It’s a paradox. Paradoxes are unhealthy. He remembers a short sci-fi where a man crashed a space station by posing a paradox to its arrogant intelligent operating system. The AI diverted all its resources to trying to solve the puzzle of a statement that contradicted itself, and everyone on the research station was killed. How many (more) people will this paradox kill?</p><p> </p><p>In the morning Hannibal makes him breakfast with the usual pomp and ceremony, including a history lesson on the origins and benefits of kosher salt. They make no reference to the night before, though Will catches glimpses of it in the predatory gaze that tracks his movements. Will wears a borrowed button-down, it’s a little loose but he’s tucked it in. It’s one of Hannibal’s ‘casual’ shirts, a dark green sea island cotton, and he knows the sight of him wearing the other man’s clothes has Hannibal salivating behind his prim smile.</p><p>   On the way to Quantico, Will asks. “What are you going to do about Jack?”</p><p>     Hannibal hums musingly. “Nothing, as yet. What are you going to do about Jack?”</p><p>    He sounds supremely unconcerned. Will shakes his head and supresses the urge to pinch at the bridge of his nose. “I have no idea.”</p><p>   “Perhaps you should give it some thought.”</p><p>   “You think I haven’t?” Incredulity laced through his words.</p><p>   “I think you’ve been worrying at it, as a dog gnaws a bone, but haven’t yet penetrated to the marrow of the problem. Too busy in the purgatory of what you ‘should’ do to find your way to what you actually want.”</p><p>Will bites down on a snarl. “What I want… is impossible.”</p><p>    “Figuratively, or literally?”</p><p>    “Literally.”</p><p>    “There are no rewards for pouring your energy into unreality. You must choose desires you can truly manifest.”</p><p>     Will supposes that, yes, it is unrealistic to hope the entire world will just pack up and leave him alone.</p><p>       Reaching the car park, Hannibal pulls up behind Will’s Volvo. Will hops out quickly with a vague thank you. He is halfway to his car, fumbling with his keys, when Hannibal calls to him over the top of the Bentley. “Will?”</p><p>    Will looks back, blinking awkwardly. Hannibal’s forearm is propped up on the roof of his car, his chin cupped in his hand. He looks mischievous and insincerely coy.</p><p>   “Uh, yes?”</p><p>    “Dante must climb the Devil’s back to escape the inferno, but it is his beloved that leads him to the spheres of paradiso.”</p><p>     Will is too tired for this shit. <em>What’s he on about now?  </em>The painful part is over and it’s all sunshine and roses from here on out? Somehow that seems unlikely.</p><p>    He infuses sardonicism into his retort. “But if your ‘beloved’ is the Devil, surely you’re just led right back to hell.”</p><p>    “ ‘Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven.’ ”</p><p>     Even quoting the Morningstar. So, he willingly accepts the mantle. ‘<em>He's the Devil, Mr. Graham. He's smoke.’</em></p><p>      Will finds himself drawn back to the Bentley, leaning against the closed passenger door. Dante’s devil is eternally tortured in the inferno, while Milton’s devil presided there. Hannibal is mixing his metaphors and twisting things to suit his purposes. <em>No change there then. </em></p><p>    “That’s assuming the Devil is willing to share his dominion.”</p><p>    “I imagine the Devil would share anything and everything with his beloved.”</p><p>    “He is also infamous for his deceptions.” Will grits, irritated by the continued use of the endearment.</p><p>    “Only when it comes to bargaining and deals. True power must be consciously claimed.”</p><p>    Thank god the Bentley is between them, otherwise the magnetic pull would have Will pressed against Hannibal already. To strangle him or mash their mouths together he’s not sure, both perhaps. He pushes off the black car and stands back, working to keep his gaze flat and unengaged. Hannibal flashes Will a quick smile, then slips back into the car and pulls away.</p><p>     “What was that about?” Beverley asks, stepping up and watching with him as the car disappears.</p><p>    “Nothing.” Will mumbles.</p><p>    “Huh. Making time with Alana’s man now, are we?”</p><p>    “Shit-” The floor drops out of his stomach. All evening. All night. The entire morning. How had Alana not entered his mind even once?</p><p>      Because, obviously, to anyone who knows anything, Hannibal is exclusively occupied by Will. The fact that Hannibal, and now Will, are the only two people who know anything doesn’t make it any less true.</p><p>      He turns to Beverly, and then remembers she is dead, <em>murdered by Hannibal </em>and the sinking feeling intensifies. Compounding it, across the car park, Abigail stands with her arms crossed across her chest. He can’t see her eyes beneath the shadow of the baseball cap, but he can feel the recrimination.</p><p>     Will gets into his car and drives home, scorching out of the Quantico car lot with a squeal of tires. Jack would no doubt like to talk to him. <em>I don’t work for the FBI anymore</em>. That thought is less weighty than the ones before it, and he tries to feel the change in buoyancy, but it’s elusive.</p><p>     He returns to his dogs; hungry, bursting to relieve themselves, and ecstatic to see him. His dogs, who would never murder and cannibalise each other… unless they were truly starving, and surely, that didn’t count<em>.</em></p><p>     Unlike rude people, which definitely counted as cannibalism. Even if they were eaten in ignorance. <em>Even if I enjoyed them at the time. </em>He rubs his face in exasperation.</p><p>    Maybe someone should give him a lobotomy. He and the rest of the world would be that much happier for it. Apart from maybe Hannibal, who would be incensed at having his favourite toy taken away, and wasn’t that a cherry on top?</p><p>     Hannibal doesn’t think of him as a toy, he knows that now, it had been easier to think he did. Easier to keep sight of the line of morality, right and wrong. He’s stepped over that line, but as long as he can still see it, the chance remains that he might still navigate back.</p><p>    The dogs are finishing their food, plates sliding over the floor in different trajectories as they enthusiastically lick the empty bowls.</p><p>     <em>Aw</em>, he’d missed this. In the mental asylum – where Hannibal had put him. Will sighs and rubs his face again.</p><p>     He sits to drink coffee and read the news on his phone, <em>always a stupid idea</em>. He tunes in to the sound of the clock ticking on the wall and stops absorbing the wider horror story playing out on the global stage.</p><p>    After a shower, and some time spaced out staring into the bathroom cabinet, he gets dressed in fresh clothes and walks the pack. The crisp air and their exuberant bounding sharpens his mind a few degrees, and their insatiable interest in the world around them brings him out of his head for an hour or so.</p><p>    Confusion finds him again as he gets home, a dark cloud loitering at the edges of his vision, too bizarre to look at directly.</p><p>    He is cleaning out the freezer and realises it is later than he thought. Or, no, he keeps forgetting it’s later in the year than he thought, it gets dark earlier. It was easy to forget time hadn’t stood still in the BSHCI. The dogs’ attentions are snagged before Will realises he hears a car door shut. He hadn’t heard the car; Alana’s hybrid.</p><p>     He pulls on his boots and doesn’t lace them, grabbing his coat and stepping out onto the porch, shutting the dogs in. They want to greet Alana but he’s in no mood for it.</p><p>    “I just want to understand.” Even in the gloaming evening light he can see she has been crying. She’s not now, but crying is only one way for a body to exhibit distress. She’s trembling, and her fists clench and unclench. “He’s choosing you. You tried to kill him, and he’s still…” she shakes her head and lifts her chin. “What <em>are </em>you to each other?”</p><p>    “What do you mean ‘choosing’ me?”</p><p>    “That’s what he said.”</p><p>     “What did he say, exactly?” He hears his own voice, low and wary.</p><p>     “That’s exactly what he said.” She snaps. She looks away and back in a quick miserable swerve. “He said you only tried to kill him to protect me. And that if he wanted to help you, he had to distance himself from me to… to ‘reassure you of his intentions’. So, you clearly mean more to him than I do.” She shrugs as she says the last part, hurt cracking the veneer under her voice.</p><p>    Will shakes his head, but they both know it’s true. He had been her mentor, friend, confidant, and lover; they had known each other for years. And Will? A patient turned friend turned accuser turned attempted murderer by proxy.</p><p>    “And it’s not because you want to protect me, is it? That you tried to…” she hesitates then forces the next words out in the closest he has ever heard her come to a snarl, “have him killed.”</p><p>    “He threatened you.” Will says, not a confirmation or a denial, just a fact. “Or, threatened me with you. Right before the two of you got together.”</p><p>     Alana shakes her head. “I don’t understand.” She says again. “You’re completely delusional, and he’s so determined to prove to you that he’s still your friend…”</p><p>    Will starts laughing. Alana stiffens. He knows her pain is real, her perspective on this however… and <em>he’s </em>delusional? He knows he looks unkind, or unhinged; either way it’s bad.</p><p>    Her voice is ice, “You’re lucky Hannibal still believes in you. No one else is going to help you.”</p><p>    <em>Ah</em>. He wipes his eyes. <em>How true.<br/></em></p><p>He could make her see, with this new development it would only take a little push. It’s a heady feeling. But who would it really be for, at this point? It would be selfish. Hannibal has released her, she can escape this madness with just a flesh wound.</p><p>     “You’re better off without either of us.” Will proffers gently, once the mirth has left him. “He obviously doesn’t appreciate you as he should. And I… I would have been bad for you.”</p><p>    Her eyes fill with water and she swallows heavily, but manages to wrangle her emotions back.</p><p>      “We would have been bad for each other.” Like this, he can see a part of her still cares for him, under all her suspicion and disappointment. He doesn’t really know how to help with that. It’s hard to indulge someone else’s pain when you’ve become numb to your own.</p><p>     He’s glad the wind is cold, he matches his tone to it.</p><p>     “Goodbye, Alana.”</p><p>They seem to have more goodbyes than hellos.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>  After six more days of living in a state of perpetual bewilderment, making up excuses to Jack and zoning out in the middle of his tasks, the turbines of Will’s ceaselessly churning perceptions have not settled. He thinks it a great pity that their perpetual motion can’t be harnessed for real world energy generation.</p><p>    At the appointed time, Will drives to Baltimore. He has accepted the invitation to change venue, to hold their session at Hannibal’s house instead of his psychiatry office. Why continue the charade of a professional relationship?</p><p>     With Will shirking his non-official duties, Jack has been calling on Hannibal’s assistance at the latest crime scenes. When Will finds out the latest serial killer Jack’s been hunting is ‘likely’ one of Hannibal’s former patients, he wants to flay the psychiatrist alive. Of course, the doctor takes great visible delight in the expression on his face, so Will lashes out verbally.</p><p>    “Did you make out with him too?”</p><p>     Hannibal signals displeasure with a slight narrowing of his eyes and a more deliberate slicing of the mushrooms. This is the first they’ve spoken directly of that evening, and clearly having it thrown in his face in this particular moment is unappreciated. <em>Good.</em></p><p>    “I can assure you, I have never crossed that line with any of my patients.” ‘Before you’, left unsaid. “Besides, he was a mere boy when he came through my practice.”</p><p>    Will grunts, skates his eyes away across the kitchen.</p><p>   “Would you like to discuss of our sexual encounter?”</p><p>    Will half jumps out of his skin. “God, you make it sound so clinical.” Like physical therapy. Hannibal grants him a little smile.</p><p>   <em>Ah, a little tit for tat. </em>Better a medical procedure than an abuse of privilege, he supposes. And technically, he hadn’t ever been Hannibal’s patient. Initially there was that shady deal with the FBI paying his bill, and the most recent ‘sessions’ had been part of an entrapment plan that had crashed almost the moment it launched. Technically he’d never given Hannibal any money. <em>Technically</em>. Did he have technicalities with other patients?</p><p>     “I wonder what would happen if I compared notes with some of your former patients.” It’s not entirely a jab, he’s genuinely curious.</p><p>   “You don’t have to fish behind my back for answers, Will. I have promised not to lie to you. All you need do is ask your questions.”</p><p>     <em>Fine. </em>“Do you manipulate all your patients?”</p><p>     “All therapy is manipulation.”</p><p>     “But do you always have your own agenda?”</p><p>     “My agenda with my patients is always to help them achieve self-actualisation.”</p><p>     “No matter what that ‘self’ looks like?”</p><p>     “Precisely. I only judge the rude. Everyone else is a product of their trauma.”</p><p>    “But not the rude?”</p><p>    “The rude too, but trauma is not an excuse for discourtesy.”</p><p>    “And what trauma led you to this conclusion?”</p><p>     Hannibal’s hands pause in their precise movements and his eyes snap up, a silent warning, then vulnerability, breathtaking – and gone. His face falls placid, a still lake before the early morning’s breeze.</p><p>    Part of Will wants to back down, retract the question, but Hannibal has promised honesty, and he expects it. He’s <em>earned </em>it with the flaming wreckage of his old life, old values, old self...</p><p>    “Mischa.” Hannibal says, and though his face is blank, his voice rasps. “My sister.” It’s all he says, but the weight in the words is answer in itself, and Will finds himself aghast at the information. Lecter was an orphan, to lose both parents <em>and </em>his sister...</p><p>     Will wants to ask what happened. He might get another half answer, he might get the whole thing; he doesn’t force it. <em>Better not just side-step it entirely either</em>. “Do you have any family?”</p><p>     “No blood relations.” He answers, voice smoothed of any irregularities. As neat and ordered as the lengths of vegetable he resumes cutting.</p><p>      As he completes the last decisive swipe of the blade, Will reaches forward to lay a hand on his forearm. Hannibal stills and Will steps up against him. Hannibal sets down the knife, allowing the contact without reaching for more.</p><p>    Will buries his nose behind the other man’s jaw, where Hannibal had fixated that pivotal night. He has to agree there’s a satisfying sensory envelopment in that juncture of flesh. He doesn’t kiss, doesn’t taste, but he can feel the pulse under his lips. The pressure and warmth and smell conspire with the fleeting moment of vulnerability to paint a sensory impression of Hannibal as a real human, and not the monster Will knows he is.</p><p>     He can only stand to be so close because being far away is so much worse. It’s a perilous place to perch, but at least he has someone to hold onto.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>Poor confused Will is still confused. </p><p>But something's gotta give, and next chapter is where that happens, and where the title of this fic will make sense!</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0004"><h2>4. Chapter 4</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>   After dinner, Will decides to bite the bullet and take the initiative. It’s been nearly a week and his brain is still failing to find an appropriate response to the diametrically opposed reactions Hannibal conjures from him.</p><p>    He has spent a lot of time cataloguing the crimes committed against him, stirring himself up into silent rages. Tonight, he will give the other part of him a chance to make its case. At the very least, getting closer to the doctor served both purposes.</p><p>     Will can’t quite imagine going to Jack with a honeytrap proposition. The thought almost makes him knock back the newly filled glass of Syrah. It’s a struggle, but he manages to stop at half the glass.</p><p>     He needs to figure this out. Hannibal has made it clear nothing will be denied him, if he can be honest enough to ask for it. He decides not to wait until they’ve moved on to the hard liquor; he’s got a pleasant buzz from the wine, any more might be counterproductive.</p><p>    “I have some tension in my shoulders.” It’s not a lie. “I… would you… give me a massage?” <em>Smooth…</em><em>make it awkward as hell, great idea.</em></p><p>    Hannibal blinks at him. He blinks slower than a normal person, and less frequently. Perhaps Will is blinking enough for the both of them.</p><p>    “Of course. Where would you be most comfortable?”</p><p>    “Uh, what do you recommend?”</p><p>     “The most effective position would for you to lie on your stomach while I work your muscles from above. Without a proper masseuse chair, the most practical option would be a bed.” Hannibal paused. “However, if you only have a mild discomfort, you can remain seated and we can work from there.”</p><p>    “I didn’t ask for a back-rub.” Will gripes, the closest he’s going to get to admitting where he would prefer to be.</p><p>    “A bed it is then.” Hannibal swirls his glass with a smile and finishes the last swallow, the wine leaving a trace of purple in the glass and on his lips. Will stares at it in fascination, but Hannibal stands and tucks his chair in. “Once the dishes are seen to.”</p><p>    Will rolls his eyes. <em>Of course. </em>The plates and cutlery are loaded into a dishwasher, the glassware and the cooking utensils washed by hand. Will dries the delicate glasses carefully, they’re more graceful and fragile than his own, and his hands are tense. He doesn’t want to accidentally shatter the moment.</p><p>    “Shall we?” Hannibal leads the way up the stairs, and walks straight passed the guest bedroom Will had slept in before. Will swallows as he follows on and the hall turns a corner, leading to an entrance guarded by samurai armour.</p><p>       The walls are panelled grey, bare stone behind the fireplace and around the door, and the dark blue eaves bow in to make the dark seem protective somehow. The bed is wider than Will’s own, crisply turned down in blue and grey sheets that match the colour scheme of the room. Japanese art is predominantly displayed throughout, and Will takes it in with some bewilderment. He has noticed some Japanese pieces around the house and office, but nowhere else are they so concentrated as in his private sanctum.</p><p>    And that’s what this is, Will realises. The secret heart of his home – it might all be a carefully cultivated pretence, but this would be the least artificial place.</p><p>     His eyes scout along the paintings framing the bed, then sweep up to take in the black antelope horns mounted on the wall.</p><p>    The books and lamps and red curtains keep it one rung above maudlin.</p><p>    “Cosy.” Remarks Will, watching Hannibal as he lays an enormous fluffy towel out on the bed and removes a jar of liquid from the bedside cabinet. He watches suspiciously as Hannibal removes his jacket and rolls up his sleeves, transfixed again by the great ugly wounds on his wrists.</p><p>    “You should take your shirt off Will.” Hannibal reminds him, and Will wonders when exactly he started shaking. <em>Man up Graham.</em></p><p>     He brings his fingers up to unbutton his shirt and can feel Hannibal tracking the movements with his eyes. He has the initiative to remove his shoes and socks, then Hannibal instructs, “Trousers too,” and Will nearly swallows his tongue.</p><p>    “Oh?” he asks, trying to sound arch, but sounding more choked.</p><p>     “It is easier to do so now, if you decide later that you would like me to work your legs as well.”</p><p>    “Oh.” He unbuttons his trousers and steps out of them, dropping them next to his shirt on the ottoman at the end of the bed.</p><p>    “Please.” Hannibal gestures at the bed politely, looking for all the world like a maître d’. Apart from those scars in his arms...</p><p>    “Take the waistcoat off.” Will snipes, before self consciously crawling onto the bed and settling on the towel. Hannibal makes a small noise of amusement behind him but Will hears him removing the vest before unstoppering the bottle and moving closer.</p><p>     The bed shifts under Hannibal’s weight and Will watches Hannibal remove his shoes and socks, tucking the latter into the former and sliding them out of the way. Will holds his breath as he feels that weight move closer and settle on either side of his hips. Hannibal lowers himself onto the top of Will’s thighs. The shaky exhale Will lets out hardly does credit to the explosion of burning embers that erupt and twist beautifully through his innards.</p><p>     The oil is poured. Some of it drips, cold, onto his vertebrae and he sucks in a breath. Hannibal shushes him gently. Will listens to the slorp of oil as Hannibal warms it in his hands, catching a light spiced woodsy scent. The hands come to run lightly over the meat of his back, smoothing efficiently, distributing the oil as though preparing Will’s back for a seasoning of mixed herbs. It seems both impersonal and completely appropriate.</p><p>    The thumbs dig in then, smoothing great grooves up either side of his spine. A louder breath cascades from Will’s lungs, and he becomes putty under Hannibal’s ministrations.</p><p>    “That’s it, Will,” Hannibal purrs, putting his weight into his hands, “deep breaths.” The low grumble of Hannibal’s voice, the approval in it, and the gliding pressure through his muscles stir the embers further, and they swirl up in a great gust of delicious anticipation, brushing shivers of pleasure through his organs.</p><p>    He wants more of it.</p><p>    “Talk to me. No, you’re always quoting something. You’re like me, right, with eidetic memory? Or something like it? How many languages do you speak?”</p><p>    “Eight.”</p><p>      Will snorts in disbelief… <em>no, in belief</em>. “Of course you do. And how many languages have you memorised poetry in?”</p><p>     “All of them, though most extensively in Italian, French, English - and Lithuanian of course. A fair number is Russian, German, Spanish. Not so many in Swedish, but that should not be taken as a slight against their literary tradition. And, while I can’t profess to pronounce the languages accurately, I have also memorised various texts in Ancient Greek and Latin.”</p><p>     Will pauses a moment to digest this, it seems as good a way as any to show he’s impressed. He rubs his fingers into the soft texture of the towel. “Well I want you to quote some Lithuanian poetry.”</p><p>     He can’t see Hannibal’s face clearly from this angle, but he is sure he can make out the edge of his mouth curled up in faint amusement.</p><p>      “That’s my native tongue. Hardly a challenge.”</p><p>    “You can impress me with Russian later. I want to hear you speak your own language.”</p><p>A reflective pause, then,“Very well. I shall recite what I can remember of ‘Mišios už išdaviko žmoną’ by Birutė Pūkelevičiūtė.”</p><p>       He feels more darting flickers of desire as Hannibal begins to carve the words into the air with low, slow, deliberation. It must be a poem, from the rhythm and rocking cadence of his voice. Unnavigable to his untrained ear, the language flows in a stream that meets unexpected hitches and obstructions, shifting the current in unanticipated ways. The timbre of Hannibal’s voice is steady, purposeful, reassuring. It’s a long poem, and as it goes on, the glow in his belly builds to a warm radiance, and there’s a sustained ache in his loins.</p><p>    There’s plenty of knots in the slab of his back. Hannibal’s fingers, thumbs, knuckles, the heels of his hands, coax each one into surrender.</p><p>    When the recitation finishes, there is a comfortable moment where Will can’t quite remember how to exercise his vocal chords.</p><p>     Hannibal is always performing, acting; charismatic and prone to the dramatic, but he had bestowed these words with significance brimming over each line. Sombre, seductive…</p><p>    “Wha’s it mean?” Will slurs, communication a great effort.</p><p>    “It is from ‘<em>Mass for a Traitor’s Wife’</em>, written by a fellow Lithuanian expatriate, though she escaped just before the Soviet occupation. Made a life in Canada.” Hannibal shifts, reaching over to pick up the bottle of oil again. “Would you like me to work your legs?”</p><p>    Will is unsure he wants to lose the feeling of Hannibal’s hands sinking into his back - but, this relaxed, he’ll go with the flow.</p><p>     “Nnf.” He manages. Hannibal interprets that how he pleases, and re-straddles him, facing away. The change in the angle and weight over Will’s erection forces another gush of air from his nose, and he would really quite like to rut, just a bit, into the sheets. Hannibal’s solid mass prohibits that for now. The smack of lubricated palms rubbing together is indecent and warms his cheeks, then oil is smoothed down his thighs and calves.</p><p>     The pressure starts out pleasantly firm, and then resolute palms wrap around his left shin, folding the leg up at the knee. Thumbs dig into his calf, forcing blood to the knots.</p><p>      Where the back massage was comfortable and relaxing, this one quickly becomes painful and insistent.</p><p>    “You carry a lot of tension in your legs, Will.”</p><p>    It may explain why he paces so much. Will ignores it. “You just want to make sure I can’t walk tomorrow.”</p><p>    Hannibal chuckles; a rarity. <em>Suspicious.<br/></em></p><p>    Hannibal had avoided answering Will’s question directly; spoken of the poet, not the poem itself. Will thought the biographical note a prelude to a detailed explanation, to be picked up again once Hannibal was repositioned at his legs. Instead, Hannibal seems to have ‘forgotten’. <em>Unlikely</em>.</p><p>    “So the poem, what’s it about? Can you translate it for me…?”</p><p>    Hannibal’s thumbs press in harder, and Will hisses. It still hurts like hell, but it’s beginning to feel good too.</p><p>    “There are a few translations, I memorised my favourite. I can relay part of that to you. It would be better than trying to conjure my own interpretation ‘on the hoof’.”</p><p>    Will arches an eyebrow, <em>is this Hannibal stalling? Or reframing the translation so it’s less personal? </em>He mumbles against the sheets, “Go f’r it.”</p><p>     There is a long moment of silence, and Will’s pulse climbs. When Hannibal starts to speak, his voice is a note huskier, and Will can hear how much harder it is for him to speak these words when they will be understood.</p><p>
  <em>“ ‘…She loves the traitor.<br/>But will it matter who we loved? Maybe it's enough that we did love -<br/>that we were even capable of love.<br/>Like molluscs trapped in an ice floe, we warmed ourselves by panting, and our<br/>lips thawed.<br/>Trees, birds, beasts: They were crueller than we were.<br/>The oceans tore at the continents with their teeth, thunder split screaming glaciers,<br/>        suicidal fish swam through the marshes, roots of grass strangled one another<br/>        within the darkness of the earth.<br/>But we were often overcome with gentleness—even for one another. Maybe we were another (unknown, unknowable) father's crowned children? </em>
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  <em>‘Maybe we did not inherit everything from the earth?<br/>Our skin is hopelessly bare (and that gaze straight into the stars).<br/>Our playthings are pathetic (space shuttles, pyramids, cathedrals).<br/>The universe chuckles. But we calmed ourselves. Orphans are always the object of ridicule.<br/>It's common. </em>
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  <em>‘Everything was holier than we were: clouds, fauna, bees.<br/>Beasts mated sadly, honestly, not desiring shameful proximity.<br/>New moons spun in the expanses of foggy space and, growing lonely, rolled off into the distance.<br/>Everyone was holier than we were: They were born quietly, they died alone,<br/> they lived keeping a respectful distance from one another.<br/>But we were greedy and our love could not be sated.<br/>When our souls met they would wrap around each other like ivy, sucking up everything.<br/>Oh soul, oh captured mind, be my ransom. We'll make love, stranger soul, until<br/>      your soul fuses<br/>                               with mine.</em>
</p><p><em>‘And this is why we need to remember one another's crimes.</em><br/>It is like breeding a blossoming bud.<br/>Like the stigmata. ’ ”</p><p>     Another coded message, but easy enough to read now he has the cypher. Will’s heart slams against the bars of his ribcage and beats itself, bloody.</p><p>     He pushes himself up onto his forearms and twists around. Hannibal slows his kneading and turns to partially face him. Their eyes meet and the current that passes in their gaze is as gutting as it is electrifying.</p><p>     The poem doesn’t offer Will an apology, or even an explanation, but it paints a picture, an oil painting to the line drawing Will had gleaned from Hannibal’s expression in the stables. Depth and light and colour.</p><p>     A lonely creature on a lonely planet, where the gaping void above laughs at any notion of gentle nature. A picture of the grinding glaciers of oppressive social mundanity, of the empty vessels Hannibal sees tiptoeing around him. The blinding realisation that he might have found another being who could share in living fully.</p><p>     Will imagines his arms bound across his chest in the now familiar straightjacket position, except this time the restraints are a tangled knot of social constructs. Hannibal leans in with a knife, the shape of it glinting twin reflections in his eyes. He cuts, and cuts, and it is the ropes that are falling to the floor, not the man underneath. Making space for Hannibal to wrap around him like ivy.</p><p>     Flouting the laws of man to live his own way is a matter of pride to Hannibal. The crimes he committed against Will, isolating him from the incurious rabble of humanity: it was a declaration, a sign of devotion... a courtship.</p><p>     Forgiveness is still out of the question, but the shadow of understanding is emerging from the mists of Will’s mind.</p><p>     Drawing his leg back, Will turns fully onto his back and Hannibal sits up on his knees. Hannibal’s eyes are dark and serious as he watches Will process the embedded sentiments.</p><p>     “Turn around properly.” he instructs, with a guiding pressure on Hannibal’s hip.</p><p>    He steers Hannibal to sit astride him, knees and broad thighs folded along his hips and waist, weight split between his shins and Will’s legs. Hannibal brushes  feather-light touches up and down Will’s ribs and abdomen. When he manages to relax into the ticklish sensation, they leave a pleasing trail in their wake. </p><p>     Will stares up at Hannibal, who stares back through half lidded eyes and a curtain of lashes. He permits Will another glimpse through the portal to his emotions.</p><p>     He’s not offering remorse or contrition. He’s not sorry he did it. He would do it again and again, as long as it took. But… he regrets that the world is the way it is, that it had been necessary in the first place.</p><p>     His own crime had been taken in the same spirit. Will catches Hannibal’s hands as they travel across his vulnerable belly, <em>tracing organs?</em></p><p>    Hannibal yields control of his arms, tendons shifting under the skin where ropes of definition wrap around his long bones. He lifts the wrists and turns them so they’re bathed in the lamplight, inspecting the pinched dark chasms of healing flesh. The cuts, orchestrated but not delivered by his hand, had been Will’s first deliberate step to reach back, to embrace the universe that Hannibal occupied.</p><p>   “‘<em>Like breeding a blossoming bud</em>.’” Will quotes back at Hannibal, stroking the inside of one forearm, close to the edge of its cut.</p><p>    “‘<em>Like the stigmata</em>.’” Hannibal echoes.</p><p>     Their gazes snare again, a cold hard look on Hannibal’s face that will is starting to recognise as pain or perhaps fear, rather than empty calculation. Insincerity and machinations are concealed behind the jovial civilised air that Hannibal wears; this expression is a lack of artifice, his true face, terrifying in its pitiless ardour.</p><p>      Will realises Hannibal is still holding out for complicity. All Will has asked for is a massage; stroking faint patterns along the ridges of his ribs is the extent of the liberties he is <em>currently </em>willing to take.</p><p>     He has to spell it out, and he’ll use the language he’s been given. “I don’t want to live keeping a respectful distance. I want shameful proximity.” Even still, Hannibal hesitates, and Will digs his fingers into Hannibal’s knees. “Just fucking ravish me already.”</p><p>     Hannibal drops towards him with his teeth partially bared, and Will has an image of him biting his face, tearing into his cheeks or ripping away his lips. Instead of rending flesh, he slows at the last minute and, keeping his eyes on Will’s, presses a soft kiss to his lips, moulding around them inquisitively, as though sampling their layout.</p><p>     Hardly ravishment. Will grips his shoulders and pulls him flush against him, and Hannibal drops his full weight down. Will is crushed into the mattress, and he welcomes the pressure, even more so when Hannibal rolls his hips.</p><p>    Will’s breath catches on a double inhale, both lungs filling to capacity as Will’s erection is pinned against Hannibal’s and ground against the material that separates their bodies. Hannibal’s mouth covers his own, trapping the breath, pulling some of it into his own lungs and rotating his hips so that Will’s nails dig deeper into his muscles.</p><p>    Will tries to speak. Pulling away, Hannibal’s hair falls in a light cascade to provide cover for the devouring force shining testily in his eyes at being temporarily thwarted.</p><p>     “Too many clothes.” Will pants. Hannibal’s shirt is rucked up and messy, an appealing change from the norm, but it’s still just goddamned fabric, and Will wants their bodies pressed together.</p><p>    Hannibal sits up with a particularly elaborate gyration of his hips that fires pleasure through his cock and causes Will’s eyes to flit towards the ceiling. Stretching his shoulders back, a gorilla boasting his chest, Hannibal raises his arms in mock impairment. Oil still glistened between his fingers.</p><p>    “If you wouldn’t mind, Will.”</p><p>    Will curls up to close the distance between them, hurrying with the nacre buttons. He starts low and moves higher, and reaching the last button near the collar he slides his hands up under the shirt, and tips it off the warm shoulders. He covers the oiled palms of Hannibal’s hand with his own as he slides the shirt off each arm.</p><p>    There is almost certainly oil on the shirt already, but it’s the thought that counts.</p><p>    The shirt free, Will growls “Slacks too.” and Hannibal chuffs a subdued snort at the further delay. He makes quick work of it, pausing with a raised brow and a thumb in the band of his stretched black boxers, an enquiry in the purse of his lips. Will swallows, mouth filling with water, and nods.</p><p>    Hannibal’s own erection is thick and full of his life’s blood. It sways as Hannibal moves, glistening at the tip with its own lubrication. The size of it is daunting, to scale with the long lines of the man. Will has never been penetrated, unless you count knives and bullets, but <em>oh god </em>does he want to be breached by Hannibal. He lets out a broken noise that has a corner of Hannibal’s mouth twitching in a smirk.</p><p>     Instead of straddling him again, he stretches along the entirety of Will’s body, sinking Will into the mattress, bringing their forearms up to cage his head. The top of Hannibal’s feet even come up under his own, the bridges pressing up against his soles, Will’s toes digging into his ankles, so that he is completely entombed in the hot musky mass of the other man. Interred, as though Hannibal is striving to be his grave and his coffin, to have him disintegrate in death and absorb him, body and soul.</p><p>    The mouth descends and all focus is drawn to the supple dexterity with which Hannibal’s lips pull and tease at his own, the teeth that nip and worry at his lower lip. Hannibal widens his jaw and Will opens his mouth to receive his tongue, the flat muscle twisting and stroking against Will’s own. The rasp of stubble between them a perfect contrapasso to the slick slide of tongues where they defy their boundaries.</p><p>     Will tries to wriggle, feeling the press of Hannibal’s hardness so close to his own, but he’s forced to lie still, compressed under his heat and weight, the breath squeezed out of him.</p><p>     Finally, still dominating his mouth, Hannibal tilts his pelvis, sliding his legs to either side of Will’s to support his own weight, he begins to surge in a persistent swell against the throbbing of Will’s cock.</p><p>    Dizziness and thick syrupy waves radiate through him, somewhat amplified by the beginnings of oxygen deprivation. It’s still not enough: the thin blue cotton of Will’s boxers an entirely unwelcome barrier between them.</p><p>    “Mmmf.” Will tries to dislodge Hannibal again, but Hannibal’s having none of it this time. Will vaguely struggles for a moment, then relents and speaks into his mouth instead. “Get ‘oxers off.”</p><p>     Hannibal’s punishing hands liberate Will’s forearms, finely clipped nails rake down his inner arms and sides to reach the bands of his boxers. He lifts off Will’s mouth to look down at him with a dark promise. With an undulation of his body, Hannibal bounces Will’s hips up off the mattress as he tugs down, freeing the swollen epicentre of Will’s arousal. It stands to attention with a flourish.</p><p>     Will watches, somewhat incredulously, as Hannibal’s lidded eyes admire the sight of his straining cock, the ribbon of his mouth pursed in a lascivious pout. His hands snake up over thighs and hips, thumbs brushing in the coarse hair beside the root of Will’s erection. Folding bodily over to fill his lungs under Will’s neck again, he retracts his hips to sit further back on Will’s legs, releasing a steady exhale as he moves down Will’s body. The trail of hot breath quickly cools and raises goose-pimples.</p><p>    <em>Oh god, oh god is he…?</em></p><p>     Reaching the dark thatch of Will’s pubic hair, Hannibal has expended all the stored up air, and he buries his nose in the seam where thigh meets his groin. Will’s aching cock is rubbing against Hannibal’s jaw as he inhales another greedy draught of his scent, and then he moves to hover right over the leaking head.</p><p>     Will brings his arms down from where Hannibal had left them folded above his head, clawing at his own cheeks and chest as the building crescendo of want threatens to shake him apart.</p><p>    “Hannibal-”</p><p>     The textured heat of Hannibal’s tongue smooths over the head of his cock, a hand coming to the shaft to hold it in place. Hannibal’s mouth opens and warm tight wetness envelopes him with a contemplative hum.</p><p>    The strangled cry that tears out of Will’s mouth would surprise him if he could spare it any thought. It feels so good <em>so fucking good </em>that he finds himself at a complete loss as to what to do with the rest of his body. Hannibal’s tongue explores the ridges and veins along his cock, the obscene sound of suction and the low growl underneath sending Will’s eyes rolling back in his head.</p><p>     He arches his spine, trying to keep his hips still, and the heels of his hands reach out over the towel and bedsheets, seeking something to grab onto. Hannibal’s free hand reaches out to seize his elbow and guide Will’s hand to his hair, inviting him to set the pace as he hollows his cheeks and starts to bob his head.</p><p>     As his head rolls in near delirium, he catches glimpses of Hannibal’s mouth stretched around him; it’s hot, <em>wow it’s hot</em>.</p><p>     Will’s breathing is uneven and unchecked, accented with untethered syllables, heat coiling and pulsing through him. Will resists clutching at the soft hair with the savagery waiting in his fingers, but he brings the other hand to the crown of Hannibal’s head and starts to fuck up into his mouth. Slow at first, and then with increasing abandon as Hannibal purrs, taking him deeper and deeper.</p><p>     Will forces himself to look down again at the man who so devastatingly up-ended his life, meets his enraptured watering eyes, and honestly doesn’t think he’s ever seen anything so illicit and perfect in his entire life.</p><p>     He feels the back of the psychiatrist’s throat, feels him choke a little, but his growls of satisfaction don’t abate. Will’s climax is rushing towards him, and now he does fix his fingers more harshly into Hannibal’s hair, croaks out a mangled approximation of his name in warning, but Hannibal’s hands dig their nails into his flesh and Will knows he wants this. Wants to swallow, to consume, to devour every part of Will.</p><p>    Will has never really had it in him to deny Hannibal, and with a cry he empties his pleasure into Hannibal’s throat. The other man rumbles in satisfaction, sucking through the orgasm, rubbing soothing circles into Will’s thighs as he shudders, strung out and aflame with crashing waves of bliss.</p><p>     When the final aftershocks have subsided, Hannibal reluctantly lets Will’s cock slip free of his mouth. He licks his lips with obvious relish, and kisses a line up Will’s body to his mouth. Will, still quivering, pulls him into the kiss, wrapping his arms around the broad shoulders.</p><p>    “At this point.” Will whispers, pulling away slightly. “I really can’t tell if I would rather fuck you, or be fucked by you.”</p><p>     Hannibal answers by loosing another feral growl and fixing himself back onto his mouth, biting and stretching his lower lip before releasing him again.</p><p>      “Which you would rather do <em>first, </em>I am sure you mean. You know I will deny you nothing, Will.” Hannibal assures with a glint in his eye, voice a little raw, throat recovering from its new acquaintanceship. Will sees - <em>and in seeing feels </em>- a hunger and determination that extend far beyond the carnal.</p><p>     Hannibal would deny Will nothing, and deny himself no part of Will. He may patiently wait for Will’s consent and complicity… but choice was never part of this equation.</p><p>      Will lays his head back and closes his eyes, feeling Hannibal’s hot breath move to his collarbone. If he had known surrender would feel like this, he would have stopped fighting a long time ago.</p><p>
  
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  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>Thanks for reading to the end ^_^</p><p>Extract of Mass of the Traitor’s Wife from ‘Autumn of Revelation’, translated by Laima Vince – read that and more Lithuanian poetry <a href="https://nationaltranslationmonth.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/Laima-Vince_Lithuanian_NTM-2017.pdf%22">here</a></p><p>If you enjoyed this and are up for something a little different, I'm writing a twisted Hannigram set in a Batman AU (I've put some thought into it, I think it works!) Check it out here: <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/26671495/chapters/65050627">Dark is the Knight</a></p>
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<a name="section0005"><h2>5. Chapter 5</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>The last chapter was meant to be THE last chapter, but I was rather chuffed by the responses, and found myself inspired to write more. Some stones still to turn over, some avenues left unexplored...</p><p> I hope this doesn't somehow ruin the tidy little arc I had tried to make! &gt;_&lt;</p><p>THANK YOU to those who took the time to kudos and comment, I love having a dialogue with the other writers and readers!</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Will sleeps, and sleeps well. He wakes to Hannibal pressed against his back, and he smiles, a genuine expression that has yet to be dragged down at the edges by guilt, he’ll no doubt find it lurking somewhere later.</p><p>     He stretches languidly, and Hannibal’s grip around his midriff tightens reflexively, but Will has no intention of moving away. Instead, he rolls to face him.</p><p>    “Morning.” He whispers, the smile shifting to the shy side of the spectrum, and Hannibal’s eyes radiate unguarded delight.</p><p>    “Good morning Will.” The warmth in his voice could cure hypothermia, perhaps it has – numb regions in his internal landscape are recovering feeling thought lost to the ice of eternal winter.</p><p>    Will almost can’t endure the emotion beaming into him from those chestnut eyes; he’s never been so close to a source of affection directed at <em>him</em>. He wants to protect himself, curl his head into Hannibal’s chest and listen to the rhythmic thumping there instead - but if that organ drums with the same emotion currently spilling over Will’s atriums, he’ll just be hearing the emotion instead of seeing it.</p><p>    “Do you have plans for today, or may I keep you for myself?”</p><p>   Will does dip his eyes then, but manages to haul them back up, his mouth pulling into a wider grin. “I’m all yours.” <em>It’s the truth, isn’t it? </em>A bubble of joy rises, dirty soapsuds of fear sliding over the surface, weighing it down, but not enough to burst it.</p><p>    Hannibal offers one of his slow blinks, a glimpse of feline affection. “In that case, I have something I would like to share with you this afternoon, if I can tempt you to a trip to the seaside?”</p><p>     Why does this make Will’s heart beat faster? He’s tumbled into some dark modern fairy tale, day-trips to the beach with the dragon prince. Is this happiness? It is terrifying. His vulnerable underbelly is wide open and presented for teeth that have already torn into him<em>so many times… </em></p><p>     He reaches between them and gently places a hand on Hannibal’s belly. It’s muscled, but there’s a comforting layer of softness there, reassuring in its pervious pliability.</p><p>    “Ok.”</p><p>    This makes Hannibal positively glow, and it’s the strangest thing to see and feel, like a charge reflecting back and building with each oscillation.</p><p>     Will pulls forward to meet warm lips, which yield readily, soft and pushing back with plump enthusiasm. Their tongues engage  with a cautious greeting dance, before falling into a languid sensuous exploration.</p><p>   With the backs of his folded fingers gliding over Will’s cheek, Hannibal inches closer, one cool foot snaking between his ankles.</p><p>   The sudden concern about his morning wood is quickly soothed by Hannibal’s own hardness being pressed against his boxers, a warmer surge of desire flooding up from his groin. He moves an arm around to Hannibal’s lower back, and strokes the fine hair on the small of his back.</p><p>    The kiss slows and deepens as they press together, clinging without yet rubbing. Will knows now to play this game, has learned to savour the sparkling fizz of anticipation that bubbles into his legs and diaphragm. To deny themselves until <em>need </em>enters the equation.</p><p>    His hand lowers to smooth over the black briefs and then clutch at the firm flesh of his ass-cheek, pressing them closer still, and Hannibal’s breathing stutters slightly.</p><p>    Will draws back enough to end the kiss.</p><p>    “Turn around?” All this self-restraint is fanning his desire and it makes him bold, which he registers vaguely might well be intentional, and he looses a low growl. “Turn around.” He repeats, and makes it an order.</p><p>    A minute smirk graces Hannibal’s reddened lips as he twists to obey, confirming the supposition, and the spurs of anger dig into his arousal. Will folds his arm tightly around Hannibal’s chest and begins to grind, slowly, against his ass.</p><p>    Boxers and briefs quickly becomes unnecessary irritations, and Will’s done delaying gratification, resentful of the barriers clothes present in these moments with Hannibal. He wriggles Hannibal’s briefs down over his hips, as far as his knees, and lets the other man free his own legs as Will tugs his boxers only part way down – impatient.</p><p>    He begins to rut again, and Hannibal shifts against him, bending one arm back around their waists to dig his fingers into Will’s back and press him closer. He lifts a leg and encases him in the heat between warm thighs, clenching the muscles. Will’s cock is gripped and squeezed as he rocks, creating beautiful harmonies of sensation, shooting up through him, sparking down to his toes.</p><p>    “Oh God.” He breathes, forehead bowing forward to rest against the nape of Hannibal’s neck, and it makes perfect incontrovertible sense to reach down and wrap his hand around the glorious heat of Hannibal’s own swollen cock.</p><p>    Hannibal’s breath catches, and the power Will feels in this moment is completely unexpected. Versatile as his imagination was, he had believed holding Hannibal in his hand like this would be a concession, another surrender, but <em>au contraire</em>, it’s like holding the man’s heart in his hand <em>hot and throbbing with blood.<br/></em></p><p>His own undulations into the cave of Hannibal’s thighs gentle as he adjusts his grip experimentally at the organ. The weight of it, the size of it, foreign in his hand; the shape and textures familiar enough. In this position it’s not dissimilar to how he would touch himself, except his elbow is bent at a more awkward angle. He explores ridges and veins and smooth stretches, finding the tip, weeping with relief at being discovered.</p><p>    The planes of Hannibal’s back quicken against Will’s chest, expanding and contracting with compromised control. The soft huffs of air, and the tension in his interlocked legs have Will wanting to melt all over him and soak him in pleasure, to soothe the blissful distress of his craving. He presses soft kisses into the back of Hannibal’s neck, completely baffled by the shocking tenderness he feels in this moment, the heat of his own breath reflected off the skin.</p><p>   He begins to move again, stroking Hannibal in time with the rolling of his own hips. The feel of Hannibal’s naked skin pressed around his own erection is devastating. The mounds of muscled cheek immediately above the juncture where Will slides between his legs cushion the impacts of their bodies, and he’s brushing against the soft velvet of Hannibal’s balls with each dive of his hips.</p><p>    The surface of Hannibal’s skin is so soft in his hand as it slides over the engorged vessels beneath that Will hesitates before tightening his grip. When he does, Hannibal arches slightly against him, before butting back and tilting his hips to allow Will a better angle.</p><p>    That giddy heady sensation has stray neurons firing around his edges of his senses, and he finds some curiosity kindling at cheeks pressed against his abdomen, the dark crevasse that splits them, and the hidden entrance that resided within.</p><p>    He shudders, arousal climbing another notch with the forbidden caste to the thought, simultaneously alluring and frightening. He drives them both more forcefully, the coil of tension winding tighter inside him.</p><p>   “Will.” Hannibal pants, one hand reaching above the pillow to find the dark curls. “You have me very close, Will.”</p><p>   This brings a swell of pride to Will’s chest, and Hannibal moans as he strokes faster. “Ah, Will.” Hannibal shuts his mouth audibly, and Will sees his jaw muscles clench, his leg muscles constrict correspondingly, squeezing Will’s cock harder between his thighs, and the added pressure combined with the sound of Hannibal fighting for his control have Will losing his, and Hannibal is also coming, and they shake together, falling apart but held with ferocious tenacity.</p><p>    Lights flash in Will's vision, colours he's never seen before, waves of euphoria and sweet relief. He wants to hang suspended in this moment, where thought has been chased away by bliss, and all that is real is the feeling washing through him and the man in his arms. As their breathing calms, Hannibal releases Will’s hair and reaches down to with index and middle finger to scoop up some of Will’s spend and some of his own, bringing the mixture to his lips, he sucks on the two digits and hums happily.</p><p>   Will is intrigued, a little grossed out, but mainly intrigued. He takes Hannibal’s fingers and pulls them from Hannibal’s mouth, brings the hand back to hold the fingers in his own mouth. Diluted by their mixed saliva, he tastes their mixed come, a hint of salty bitterness that sends an unidentifiable shiver through him. Hannibal shifts around to face him again, and sets to kissing his face with the small worshipful kisses that Will’s orgasms bring out of him. Will rather likes it.</p><p> </p><p>   They stay in bed the whole morning, something not normally possible for either of them. Having primed the neighbours the night before that they might need to check on the dogs, he sends a text to confirm the request.</p><p>   It had been in the back of his mind he might stay over, or else do something stupid and get carved up.</p><p>    In Will’s estimation, Hannibal out-does himself at brunch. In the time it takes Will to shower and dress and psyche himself up to go downstairs, the dining room table has become a buffet table of pastries and pancakes, cooked meats, eggs and fruits. A rotating tray of jams and condiments sits between the table settings, and the Belgian syphon coffee machine gurgles coquettishly in the corner.</p><p>     A “Wow,” escapes Will’s lips, and if his eyes are not deceiving him, Hannibal blushes slightly. </p><p>   “I rarely have justification to indulge in a late breakfast.”</p><p>    The offer of an excuse is as endearing as the flush on his high cheekbones, and Will finds his feet carrying him into the other man’s space, to brush his lips against the smooth skin of his cheek. The surprised huff has him squeezing Hannibal’s wrist, and he murmurs “Thank you,” before stepping away.</p><p>    The upturned expression on Hannibal’s face appears resistant to his efforts to clear it, and it takes him a moment to compose himself for speech. This delights Will, who feels an uncanny smugness as he reaches for a croissant and turns the tray to examine the marmalades.</p><p> </p><p>     Another dry crisp winter day waits for them outside the Baltimore brownstone; the sky white and the light diffuse. There’s no question about whose car they’ll take, and Will finds he is quite content to be a passenger. The day has an abstract dreamlike quality to it, and the drive out of Baltimore and around Washington passes in a comfortable silence.</p><p>    The problems of Jack and Alana, the FBI and, well, morality, all seem to be keeping their distance, tethered to the back of the Bentley and trailing like a bunch of balloons. Their personal history a blimp far above, its shadow not currently cast over the car.</p><p>     “Is it the coast you want to show me, or is there something specific there?” Will asks, to satisfy a background craving for Hannibal’s voice, rather than to sate his curiosity.</p><p>   “I want to show you everything Will. Today’s adventure shall – I hope – be the first of many.”</p><p>   “Another evasion.” Will sighs fondly.</p><p>   “You’re getting too good at spotting them.”</p><p>   “You rely on them too heavily.”</p><p>    “You must allow me some mystery.” Hannibal responds with an arched eyebrow.</p><p>    Smirking out the window at passing trees, a stray thought that perhaps there’s a tableaux out there Hannibal wants him to see comes nipping at the tyres of the car. The dark notion is incongruous with the atmosphere in the car and the bright sky above, but his first exposure to Hannibal’s ‘art’ had been in a sunny meadow in Minnesota… field kabuki.</p><p>    Who’s to say the atmosphere in the car has been built by anyone except Will? Hannibal is as button downed as ever, the rose-tinted glasses of a new ‘relationship’ could have Will filling the car with his own delusions – when has he ever really been able to read Hannibal?</p><p>   At this point, doubting Hannibal means doubting his own perceptions, and once he starts down that road he can’t trust anything, so he may as well go along with it. If it turns out he’s being duped again… well, there’s always death.</p><p>    Either sensing the souring of Will’s mood, or perhaps on a similar track himself, Hannibal’s voice lowers when he next speaks.</p><p>     “I feel I should say, it was not just an evasive tactic. There are many places I would like to take you, should you feel so inclined.”</p><p>      Again, that hesitancy, the recurring caveat of Will’s freedom to choose, still too cautious to make assumptions. It reminds him of earlier in the dining room, the man surprised by his own eagerness, a man not used to bashfulness, or the comfort of reassurance.<br/>The truth is, neither of them have the first idea how to go about an intimate relationship. It’s something Will has quietly yearned for throughout his life, berating himself for the weakness of wanting it.</p><p>    Hannibal had likely never wanted it, until meeting Will. Now Will berates himself for wanting Hannibal, while Hannibal simply re-marshalled his forces on a new campaign.</p><p>    That poem though; maybe Hannibal had known he wanted it, had just never believed such a thing was possible. That someone could understand him, that someone could hold his interest; that such a person could know fully what he is, and still want him back? <em>Yeah that does seem pretty unlikely.<br/></em></p><p>But then, maybe if he didn’t go around carving up supposed foster daughters…</p><p>   Will shuts his eyes. There it is, the thought that he keeps pushing away. Abigail. The strength which which he does not wish to think of her speaks to the true volume of his emotion there, it is the biggest sticking point, and because he <em>does </em>want Hannibal, he's been avoiding it. </p><p>    He’s going around and around again. He’s so sick of feeling this dizzy disorientation.</p><p>   “Can you stop the car?” At least he sounds less panicked this time.</p><p>    Hannibal regards him with faint concern, but obliges. They pull off the road to block a track that would be shady with overhanging trees, if the sun were fully out. Hannibal steps from the car at the same time Will clambers out, and comes round to his side of the car, as predicted.</p><p>    When he’s within reach Will grabs him with both hands, and pulls him closer by his jacket, pinning himself against the Bentley with Hannibal’s weight. It’s easier to feel trapped, to feel he has no choice, that he <em>must </em>give in to what he fundamentally desires. It’s easier to believe when Hannibal pins him physically and lifts Will’s jaw to draw a kiss from him.</p><p>   It still surprises him how his limbs go weak, how completely different it is, being <em>taken </em>instead of the cautious mutual explorations he’s had with women. It’s intoxicating, wanting someone and being surrounded by them, feeling them want you back.</p><p>    With that thought he surges forward, spins them around so he’s pinning Hannibal against the car, and proceeds to despoil the man’s mouth in return.   </p><p>    Hannibal’s body reacts, a telltale stiffness growing against him, and the swell of his own desire in response is immediate. This time, this time he wants to taste for himself.</p><p>    He grips Hannibal through his trousers and shivers as the other man moans into his mouth, then rips free of the kiss and casts a defiant glare at Hannibal before sliding down his body and sinking to his knees.</p><p>    “Will-” Caution, consternation, warning.</p><p>    “Let me.” He growls, and unzips Hannibal’s flies. They’re blocked by the car from the main road, someone would have to come along the track to spot them, and Will doesn’t care, he doesn’t fucking care, and if he starts <em>thinking </em>his emotions might swing the other way and launch him into a pit of self-loathing.</p><p>   Giving Hannibal pleasure had revealed a novel form of power and he wants more. He wants, he <em>wants</em>, his <em>body </em>wants. He’s never done this before, but the sight of Hannibal’s cock the night before had knocked something loose in him, and earlier in the day, the homeopathic taste of Hannibal’s seed had cured his fear.</p><p>   He undoes the button on the slacks, and pulls down maroon briefs to release the jumping shaft and its swollen head.</p><p>    Now he lifts his eyes again, waiting for Hannibal’s permission, lips slightly parted in a blatant tease. If he’s correct about the depth and sincerity of this man’s emotions, about the scale of his fascination and obsession, there’s no way he can refuse this, however ‘public’.</p><p>    <em>I will deny you nothing, </em>he had said.</p><p>    Hannibal’s eyes flicker closed, loosing a sigh of arousal and tested patience. To Will’s practiced eye, the subtle tension around his eyes screams frustration - and no little despair. He dips his head in resignation. “I don’t seem to have it in me to refuse you, and certainly not like this.” A hand strokes the hair back from Will’s eyes. “If you’re sure this is what you want, and where you want to do it.”</p><p>    Will brings his face closer to Hannibal’s cock, breathes in his arousal, and brings his hands up to dig his thumbs into the man’s hip.</p><p>    “You’re the one who doesn’t seem sure.” Will licks his lips, staring up at Hannibal under his lashes, a wicked smile pulling at his lips. “I think I’ve made it pretty clear what I want in this moment.”</p><p>    To make it even clearer, he nuzzles the side of Hannibal’s glans with the smoother part of his cheek.</p><p>    Hannibal turns his head slightly, a frustrated huff breaking through the bars of his control. “Is this why you stopped the car, Will? To have me beg?”</p><p>    “I’m the one on my knees.” Will points out sweetly, digging his fingers harder into Hannibal’s hips, pinning him more forcefully into the side of the Bentley.</p><p>    The conflicting vocal and body language has Hannibal cursing in a foreign language, before grinding his teeth and croaking out, “Please Will, I want you. Here, now, in this place; please.”</p><p>    It seems Hannibal has the mastery to deny himself and is only humouring Will, either that or the polymath’s natural abilities don’t extend to begging. The words and the obvious arousal make up for the short-changed entreaty, and Will is too impatient for Hannibal to lose himself against his stupid Bentley to hold out for more.</p><p>    He curves his tongue, and cups the head of Hannibal’s cock, rubbing lightly at the frenulum before widening his jaw and swallowing to halfway down the shaft, only to clamp his lips and draw back again. He can feel the heavy weight of Hannibal on his tongue, thickening as blood rushes to greet the sensations rising through him. The deep rumble Will feels vibrate through Hannibal’s body, as much as hears from his mouth, confirms his investment in the moment. Will smiles around his mouth’s stretch, tonguing the nerves around the ridged bulb.</p><p>   Hannibal lifts his face to the sky, and Will’s eyes snag on the exposed throat. He runs a hand up the man’s shirt. Yes, he’s never done this before, but he knows what makes him squirm, and from the hitched noises and the way one palm slaps against the side of the car, Will knows he’s succeeding.</p><p>   Once acclimatised, the taste isn’t so disconcerting. The ache in his jaw is growing, but he increases suction and begins to take Hannibal deeper, testing his own limits as his own pleasure starts to build at the damned eroticism of the act. He squeezes his own erection through his slacks and groans, the purr eliciting an extremely un-Hannibal whimper from the man above.</p><p>   <em>Jesus. </em>A fresh flush of arousal and power course through Will as he contemplates the possibility of driving more needy sounds from the domineering character. Could he make him whine? Could he make him cry out?</p><p>    To his great astonishment, Will is apparently approaching his own orgasm, despite how little attention his own cock has been receiving. He doesn’t particularly want to come into his pants, so he slows the nodding of his head, using the opportunity to tongue around the glans again, lavishing attention to the nerves there as he quickly releases his own straining penis.</p><p>   Hannibal cuts off a breath at the change in rhythm and focus, and then catches sight of the reason behind the change in momentum and Will feels his legs tremble.</p><p>    “God, Will.” Hannibal breathes out, and Will returns one hand to massage the base of Hannibal’s cock while beginning to stroke his own, setting a new pace with his bobbing.</p><p>    It doesn’t take long after that; Hannibal manages to choke a warning out between clenched teeth, and Will appreciates the courtesy but isn’t planning to quit before the finale.</p><p>   He wants to feel Hannibal pulse inside him and break apart around him. The man’s been well behaved, keeping his hips still and not abusing Will’s mouth – a kindness considering Will’s beginner status, but he’s determined he should have the full experience, so he swallows Hannibal’s cock into his throat, ignoring the choking gagging sensation when the cockhead hits the pharynx.</p><p>    As he had hoped, Hannibal cries out and finally snaps his hips forward in a staccato of lost control as he comes.</p><p>   His empathy has him feeling what Hannibal feels, and in seconds Will is spurting over the dirt track between shiny leather brogues. He barely tastes the salty cream of Hannibal's come, too consumed by the orgasm sweeping through him. Easing back a little to gasp in some deeper breaths, but still supporting Hannibal’s trembling sensitive heat with his mouth, his head is light and he feels blissfully connected to the perpetrator of his ruin. <br/><br/>    When he pulls back to allow his mouthful to slide out from his lips, he considerately tucks Hannibal back in before easing his own spent cock into his pants, wiping the thick sheen of saliva from his chin. </p><p>   Hannibal tugs Will to his feet and slams him against the car to kiss him with a vigour and passion that floods through his senses like a cleansing wave, adoration pouring into him. Withdrawing, Hannibal cups his chin, and Will drops the weight of his head into the palm and looks up through his lashes to meet the other’s eyes. A thumb traces his lower lip, and Hannibal looks ready to devour and exult him. “You make me feel impossible things, <em>mylimas</em>.”</p><p>    Will doesn’t respond, can’t; can only gaze back and let Hannibal’s emotion blast all other thoughts from his mind. </p><p>    After a moment, the hand slides up his jaw and moves to his hair, and is met by the other, straightening and smoothing his curls, tucking them back, straightening his collar, and tucking the shirt back into his waistband.</p><p>    “What are you doing?” Will grumbles, voice hoarse.</p><p>    “Just making sure you’re presentable for company.” He looks down and clucks a tongue at the marks on Will’s knees.</p><p>   “Oops.” Will mumbles, noticing them himself for the first time. He brushes at them, but the ground was mostly dry, and the majority dusts off. He’s a scruffy man, his trousers often stained from the dogs jumping up, or from roughhousing them, and who the hell are they gonna run into out here who might give a damn?</p><p>     Hannibal probably just likes messing about with his hair.<br/><br/></p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0006"><h2>6. Chapter 6</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>As they resume their drive to the coast, Will starts to feel the post-orgasm sleepiness descend around him like a cloud. To fight it off, he challenges himself to conversation.</p><p>   “Have you slept with men before?” <em>No point beating around the bush. </em></p><p>   “ ‘Slept with’? No. Some experimentation in my early twenties, but with far less genuine enthusiasm on my part.”</p><p>  “Genuine enthusiasm huh?” Will repeats, unable to suppress a smirk. He envies Hannibal’s ability to speak in such a blasé manner about such a candid topic, and before he can convince his awkward mouth to follow this up with something, Hannibal elaborates.</p><p>     “I can honestly say that, prior to our engagements, sex has always been performative for me. Not without its appeal, but not a consuming desire.”</p><p>   Will flushes, pleased and a little disturbed. He almost asks ‘why me’, but hears it in his own mind before his tongue betrays him.</p><p>    “Have you, Will?”</p><p>   <em>Oh right. Reciprocity, the painful end of the bargain. </em>Still, at least he isn’t succumbing to the post-coital slumber.<em><br/></em></p><p> “Nope. No men, no experimenting with men. No obvious attraction to men. Men always seemed threatening, and women… safer. Hah. Not that that seems to have mattered in this case.”</p><p>    “You are more dangerous than you have ever been before, perhaps that fear has gone.”</p><p>     “I think fear’s still a pretty big part of my make-up, but... yes, maybe acknowledging my own capacity for violence has made a difference. Sending Brown after you – I felt a change in me while I waited for news.”</p><p>    The perspectives imprinted into Will by the poem make this easier to speak about than he anticipated. In contrast to how most people would feel, Hannibal is delighted Will tried to have him killed, and no doubt thrilled by the change it wrought. </p><p>   They haven’t talked much about killing since this new dynamic emerged between them, this confession might well bring it back to the fore. Something he should have considered before the disclosure.</p><p>    “Can you describe this change?”</p><p>    And there it is. He could deflect, but his extremities tingle with the needles of remembrance.</p><p>    “I felt… I was being torn apart by the darkness crawling out of me. My scalp burned with the sensation of antlers ripping out of my skull. It was death, and birth and power. It hurt. It went beyond feeling justified, it felt… amazing.”</p><p>    Hannibal briefly takes his eyes off the road to bore into Will, who, in his current mind set, can withstand the blazing scrutiny.</p><p>   “You have a vivid mind Will.” The praise makes him glow. “How did learning I had survived make you feel?”</p><p>   Will lowers his chin to his chest, closing his eyes, determined to answer truthfully. When he speaks, it’s very quietly and very softly. “Cheated. And, incredibly relieved.”</p><p>   “And when I stopped you killing Ingram?”</p><p>   “Cheated.”</p><p>   The silence stretches after his one word answer. He doesn’t fill it. Renewed tension pours in to fill the void. And in the spaces in between its vibrations, Will examines the admission and what this likely means. After the brief hiatus and resetting the rules of engagement, he has just initiated a discussion about <em>his own </em>desire to kill.</p><p>  Because somehow, the desire was his, and is still there; despite, or because of, this new intimacy between them, he can’t tell. He also knows he can’t put all of this on Hannibal. He may not have always wanted to hurt bad people - but the potential has always been there, and why does he owe the world his goddammed subservience? Seeing into the vicious and unscrupulous, feeling their minds pass in a miasma through his own, has been a curse his whole life. What a balm it would be to curse them back.</p><p>     Hannibal signals off the road and pulls onto a track with a discreet enough entrance that Will might not have noticed it if they had driven on by. The dirt road winds between some fields and comes up over a rise where Will catches sight of the flat blue horizon and feels a beat of calm in his chest.</p><p>    Then he sees where the track leads.</p><p>    “What’s this? A little weekend getaway you’ve kept to yourself?” he asks, with some confusion as they approach the glass-fronted house at the end of the drive. Hannibal’s earlier comment about being presentable for ‘company’ suddenly colliding with his inherent social anxiety.</p><p>   “Not entirely to myself.”</p><p>    That confirms it. <em>Shit. What the hell?</em></p><p>    Hannibal parks the car and exits the Bentley, and – because Will is making no move to climb out himself, walks around to open the passenger side door.</p><p>   “I assure you Will, there is nothing to fear. I am certain this is something you will wish to see.”</p><p>   Will searches his expression, stony reserve masking his apprehension. “Ok.” He stands and Hannibal gently swings the car door shut behind him. Before leading the way inside, he walks to the cliff edge and looks down, offering Will - or himself - a brief reprieve.</p><p>    They stand overlooking the ocean and the dark cliffs where the land beneath them ends abruptly. The wind is strong, blowing their hair back off their faces, and seagulls cry out their challenges as they hang effortlessly in the chasing currents.</p><p>    “Quite dramatic.” Will says after a moment. Hannibal turns to look at him, and Will is surprised to find his expression is a little sad, a little fearful.</p><p>    “Will,” he says quietly, the air almost whipping it out of hearing, and he reaches out with a hand. Will steps closer and takes the dry warm palm to press into his own, completely enthralled by the wince of pain in Hannibal’s eyes as he whispers, “I love you.”</p><p>    He doesn’t give Will the opportunity to say it back, <em>not that he would have, </em>pressing an insistent kiss to the surprised slant of his lips.</p><p>   The kiss is as gentle as the words, as stubborn as the man behind them, who makes no move to replicate the earlier passion of their exchanges. His lips are colder in the wind, the fingers grazing his cheeks reverent and wistful. He pulls away again, gaze piercing through Will’s retinas, then flicking to different corners of his face.</p><p>   Will understands, with a fresh weight in his belly, that while Hannibal may believe Will wants to see this, he is preparing himself for rejection. It is intensely confusing.</p><p>    “Come with me,” he says finally, still holding Will’s hand, and leads him into the house.</p><p>  </p><p>    “Abigail?”</p><p>    Hannibal has drugged him. Or Will is hallucinating again. Or both. Or, he is still asleep. Perhaps he has died.</p><p>    “I’m so sorry, Will.”</p><p>     This can’t be Abigail. Her eyes are too big, too blue, this must be an idealised version of Abigail. She’s never looked healthier. In his imagination though, she never looks scared of him… <em>not since his Hobbs visions subsided…</em>but she’s trembling.</p><p>    “Abigail. Are you… okay?” The house tilts, ready to tip into the ocean below. He can picture it graphically; furniture sliding towards the glass panels, then everything suspended in free-fall. He reaches out to the piano for support, but it’s further away than he thought, and his head is floating away, so sinking to knees seems like a good idea. <em>It’s not quite falling to the floor, there’s a bit more dignity than that.<br/></em></p><p>He stares up at her and can’t see her properly for tears, but he thinks tears are falling from her face too.</p><p>   Of course, this couldn’t just be a nice day by the beach, it has to be another grand revelation, another paradigm shift. The impossible keeps happening, and now the dead are returning to life. This is the kind of shit that makes people born-again religious zealots.</p><p>   “How?” he asks, because ‘why’ is too horrible to contemplate right now.</p><p>   Her eyes dart behind him, to where Hannibal has come to stand with his knee at Will’s back, a distant support should he need it. Wisely, the doctor doesn’t speak for her, and Abigail’s eyes return to Will’s, her mouth trembling.</p><p>    “We syphoned my blood, pumped it across the floor. I… let him take my ear.” She fidgets, squirming under her skin. “The FBI were on to me, and you… you knew too, and that day, in the cabin, you were so angry… he showed me a way out, and… it was easier. I didn’t know who I could trust.”</p><p>     <em>Ow. Ow. Ow. Why is this so painful?<br/></em></p><p>He’d driven her to this with his Hobbs delusions and his fevered brain.</p><p>     No, she was complicit in the deception.</p><p>     No, Hannibal had forced her.</p><p>     No, she could think for herself. <em>Could she? Could any of them with Hannibal marionetting above them?</em>  </p><p>   <em>Fuck</em>. He’s shaking.</p><p>   “I’m so sorry, Will.” She says again, and she comes forward to kneel with him, and wraps him in a hug.</p><p>    The gesture is without precedence. If he’s honest with himself, she’s always been a little wary of him, guarded and sharp. The hug is an apology, but it’s also acceptance, an initiation into the tribe of Her-and-Hannibal. He carefully folds his arms around her and squeezes back, tears still streaming down his face.</p><p>    <em>Now </em>he feels the relief, now he is awash with it. Abigail is alive. Her hair smells of passion fruit and pomegranate, she is warm and solid and real in his arms. It takes everything he has to limit his crying and not bawl like a baby.</p><p>    Do the ends ever justify the means? This end might. Somehow, they’ve all found themselves in an impossible Venn diagram, the centre a rare colour where they all overlap.</p><p>      Abigail pulls him to his feet and he wipes his face with the obligatory guilty chuckle. What happens now? Do they make small-talk? Do they have a group therapy session?</p><p>    “Do you have any beer?” He settles on, and to his delight, Abigail bursts into laughter.</p><p> </p><p>     Hannibal remains cautious and cordial as they all sit in the sunken living room, observing Will and Abigail’s interactions, only speaking when directly spoken to. Will doesn’t speak much either, their resurrected foster daughter filling the air with animated chatter. To his ever-mounting relief, she seems confident and happy in the situation, not at all the traumatised abductee with Stockholm syndrome – which his how he should be viewing this, how Alana and Jack certainly would.</p><p>    <em>Self-righteous pricks. </em>Wasn’t he one of those self-righteous pricks? The clear moral delineations that had steered him through the morass of shifting perspectives had faded into the general scribble of too many opinions. But who else’s opinions mattered? None of them <em>knew</em>, none of them <em>could </em><em>know </em>what the three of them now share. But then, does Will really know? Who’s to say when the next big reveal might occur, is he expected to just keep spinning? Or is he supposed to become tidally locked; Mercury, too close to the sun to have its own rotation, forever dazzled as it gazes at the star at the centre of its universe.</p><p>    After an hour or so of Abigail quizzing Will about the world outside and expressing enthusiastic indecision about the range of opportunities Hannibal has laid out for her consideration, the man in question gently excuses himself to go and make dinner.</p><p>    Abigail sidles closer to Will on the sofa to ask, “Do you want to get some air?”</p><p>    He nods. “Sure.”</p><p>    In silent accord they eschew the rest of the patio and make their way to the cliff edge.</p><p>    “It’s trippy.” She says, raising her voice into the wind, which has died down since they arrived. “The cliffs are eroded further back near the bottom, so looking down you just see more water. It’s like, you look down and you don’t feel like you’re looking down, you have to lean forward, and then you feel like you’re falling. Even when you’re not.”</p><p>    “Do you feel you’re on unstable ground Abigail?”</p><p>   She laughs. “You two are so similar. I bet you don’t even see it.”</p><p>  “I never used to, but it’s getting harder to differentiate now.”</p><p>   She rolls her eyes. “You definitely share a flare for the dramatic.”</p><p>   This brings a more relaxed chuckle out of him. “Do you though? Feel unstable, with him?”</p><p>   She shrugs. “Maybe at first, but that was just the old world falling away. Now I feel… lucky. I feel free!” She smiles. “You heard, he’s going to pay for plastic surgery, my ear will look… mostly normal, and I’ll be able to hear properly out of it again. And, while that’s happening, I can choose to change my face and name and start fresh in the States, or I can keep my face and he’ll pay for me to go to college anywhere in the world! I could go to England, or Rome, or Sydney!” Abigail sounds genuinely excited, less traumatised than when Will had last spent time with her.</p><p>   “How much have you seen him, while all this went on?”</p><p>   “Oh, I dunno. Once a week, at least. He stayed over sometimes. I like it when he makes breakfast, but I wish he’d sleep in a bit longer, I always have to get up early when he’s around.”</p><p>   Will laughs again. Standing here, looking over the twilight sea, he feels some of her hope and optimism. It’s a rare treat for him, but she doesn’t seem to worry about its longevity. Is she naïve, or is he cynical?</p><p>    Hannibal believes they can maintain this, outsmart the world, and it would be a tough stretch to call <em>him </em>naïve. <em>In Hannibal we trust. </em></p><p><em>   God help us. </em>Although, this afternoon has evidenced that Hannibal might be more merciful than God. A darker and more jealous god, perhaps, but indifference isn’t part of his repertoire.</p><p>   “You two are cute together.” She offers into his fading smile. He turns to look at her, cheeks heating, and she supplies, “I was watching when you guys got out of the car.”</p><p>   “Were- were you surprised?”</p><p>    “Not really.”</p><p>   “Huh. I was.”</p><p>   “I wondered if you were a couple when you first came bursting into my room in Port Haven.”</p><p>   “What?”</p><p>   “Yeah, you know, he was all protective of you around Freddie. It was kinda sweet."</p><p>   “ …‘Sweet.’ ”</p><p>    “I’d been rattled by Freddie, and was generally freaked out, but… even so. In high school you’re sort of trained to pick up on that stuff. Maybe you lose it as you get older.”</p><p>   “I think I’ve always been behind the curve in that area.”</p><p>   Abigail nudges him gently. “He’s not a bad catch.”</p><p>   “For a cannibalistic serial killer.”</p><p>   “I’m a cannibal.” She keeps her tone level, but he can hear the hurt in it all the same.</p><p>   “Yeah, not by choice.”</p><p>   “By now by choice. Do you think less of me for it?”</p><p>    He sighs, pushes for a renewal of eye contact. “Not a chance.”</p><p>    She grins. “Good answer.”</p><p>   When they sit down for dinner, Will asks, “Braised loin of what?” and Abigail chokes on a snort of laughter, fighting unsuccessfully to keep her face straight. Hannibal allows their shared chuckles with indulgent sufferance, relief evident when they both begin to eat with appetite.</p><p>    As the three of them clean up in the kitchen, the two men catch Abigail in a big yawn, and share a smile. It’s the first real smile they’ve shared since Hannibal flipped the board again, and it eases something in Will’s chest.</p><p>    “We should head back.” Hannibal states, glancing down at his expensive watch, as though he didn’t already have a good idea of the time.</p><p>    “Are you sure? There’s always the guest bedroom…” She says, with a hint of mischief in her smile.</p><p>    “I believe the canine contingent might be feeling neglected.”</p><p>     This jolts Will, Hannibal showing consideration over the pack. It warms him, and the lingering anger becomes more ephemeral, less distinct.</p><p>    He had arranged for the dogs to be taken care of through to the following day, but perhaps some time to digest all this would be no bad thing. “We’ll let you get some rest.” Will says. “But, I hope to see you again soon?”</p><p>    “You better come visit me all the time, now you know I’m here. I’m starved for company!”</p><p>    He grins. “I could bring the dogs?”</p><p>   She nods and smiles back, one of her more self-conscious closed lip smiles. “It’s good to see you again, Will.”</p><p>   “You too, Abigail.”</p><p>   It takes him a moment to realise she’s angling for a hug, and he steps forward in an awkward rush to make up for his confused hesitation.</p><p>   She hums a reassuring giggle, “You need some practice, huh?”</p><p>   “Hah. Guess so.”</p><p>   She releases him and steps away. “We’ll get you all trained up.” She says, with a glint in her eye, and Will considers her choice of words as she waves them off.</p><p> </p><p><br/>    The Bentley takes the track slowly, Hannibal's caution extending beyond the manoeuvring of his vehicle into the individual breaths he takes. The silence between them is a thick putty that Will is all too happy to press into. They can’t have this conversation in a confined space, in transit, while even a small part of Hannibal’s attention has to be elsewhere. Equally, the usual desire to flee the discussion is absent. He may not know how he feels about this right now, but trying to figure it out completely alone is no longer appealing.</p><p>     He’s not ready to open his empathy up to Hannibal yet. The temptation is there of course, but doing so too early will corrupt honest introspection, so first he must determine how he feels at learning this new truth.</p><p>     The knowledge and experiences that have accumulated in him the past few months are a heavy sediment in his soul; reality tastes different now. His thoughts have often not been tasty, but now his pallet has changed, and it is the old system of beliefs that sour his tongue, that leave a bitter mark in his mouth.</p><p>   So quickly, Jack and the others had turned on Abigail. So quickly had they turned on him. The system he had sworn to protect had savaged him at his weakest and most vulnerable. Then Jack had snapped shut on his ankle again the very minute he had been released from the BSHCI, before he had even left the building.</p><p>    Yes, Hannibal and Jack had both treated him like absolute shit, but where Jack saw him as a means to an end, Hannibal saw... <em>him</em>. It shouldn’t come down to which of the two men he owes his allegiance to, but the two men have come to stand for different worldviews. Both viewpoints deeply flawed, but solid in a way his own can never be.</p><p>   By all rights, the moment Hannibal leaves him alone, he should drive back to the cliff top, scoop up Abigail, and flee the FBI and Hannibal both. Except Abigail seems to like Hannibal, to look forward to the futures he could provide. She has stopped seeing the horror, and Will could too, if he let himself.</p><p>     He knows exactly what kind of future awaits him, should he somehow summon the willpower to reject this and reclaim the man he had been before Hannibal. He cannot quite picture what future Hannibal might provide for them, but he indulges in hazy conjecture as he falls asleep to the purr of the Bentley’s engine, the warm air pumping from its vents.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>My first time writing Abigail, always felt pretty sorry for the kid, it's nice to give her some hope!</p><p>So, now all of Hannibal's cards are on the table and he's as exposed as he's ever been; will our dear Will treat him with the compassion he doesn't deserve? Or treat him to a taste of his own medicine?<br/>He's definitely going to treat him to something! ;)</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0007"><h2>7. Chapter 7</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p> </p><p>He didn’t dream, a rare enough occurrence that waking up is like experiencing lost time. The car has slowed, and pitches faintly over the uneven surface of his track in Wolf Trap.</p><p>    “Sorry.” He says distantly, rubbing his eyes. Jesus. He must have slept for nearly three hours. The car dashboard has the time at ten past one, and Will sits up straighter as Hannibal pulls to a stop and turns off the engine.</p><p>    “That’s quite alright Will, it was gratifying to see you sleep so peacefully.”</p><p>    Hannibal makes no move to get out of the car, and Will squints at him. It’s late, but they need to talk. “Do – Would you like to come in?”</p><p>    The steady gaze that meets his holds a hint of evaluation. “Thank you, Will, yes I would.” Maddeningly polite.</p><p>     He heads to the porch, Hannibal a dark shadow behind him, and Will finds he quite likes the man a little meeker than usual. The dogs are absent, as expected, but Hannibal looks around in vague surprise as Will unlocks and opens the door.</p><p>     “Yeah, the neighbour took them, he’s happy to let them play on the farm. Don’t really want to use Alana as a dog-sitter anymore.”</p><p>    Hannibal nods. “Perhaps an even more convenient solution.”</p><p>    “Means I’ve gotta pitch in with the harvesting though.” Will shrugs.</p><p>    “I would have thought you might enjoy that.”</p><p>    “I might.”</p><p>    The growing silence pools with tension. Will clears his throat, remembering his hosting duties.</p><p>    “Get you a drink?”</p><p>    Hannibal raises a pale eyebrow. “What do you have?”</p><p>    “Coffee, beer, whiskey. Uh, water.”</p><p>    “A little whiskey would be very welcome.”</p><p>    “Right.” Will waves vaguely at the dog-eared furniture. “Make yourself at home.”</p><p>    He brings back two glasses and the fancy scotch he sometimes buys himself, the nicest bottle he owns. It might make this less painful.</p><p>   “Glenfiddich.” Hannibal notes with approval, as Will sits across from him. “Have you ever been to Scotland, Will?”</p><p>    “Nope.” Will replies with a sour twist of his lips. “Never left America. Unless you count international waters.”</p><p>     “The Highlands are beautiful part of the world.” Hannibal asserts, before lifting his glass and inhaling the fumes that evaporate off its surface, the licking flames of ethereal spirits.</p><p>     “No doubt.” Will effectively ends the conversation; small talk has no place at their table. Starting the next conversation is harder, but it has to be done.</p><p>    “What were you waiting for, what <em>test</em> did I pass for you to bring me to Abigail?”</p><p>     Hannibal leans back in his chair and crosses one knee over the other, tilting his head into his psychiatrist pose.</p><p>    “No, don’t, don’t fucking do that.” Will snaps. “I can see you retreating, I want honesty, not some complex dance around the topic.”</p><p>  “Acceptance, Will. I was waiting for you to accept me for who I am, knowing the worst of me, still allowing yourself to see the best in me.”</p><p>    The answer silences him, momentarily, stealing some of his thunder. He had been expecting some psychobabble about trust or being ‘ready’, but he had asked for honesty and it had been granted. Had Will accepted him, fully? Hannibal seems to believe so. It shouldn’t make him feel guilty, but it does. And guilt makes him angry.</p><p>   “Do you have any idea, <em>any </em>idea, how fucking painful this has all been?”</p><p>    Holding his eyes, Hannibal nods slowly. “Yes, I think I do.”</p><p>    “But you thought it was worth it?”</p><p>    “I suppose I’m hoping you might someday confirm that for me.”</p><p>    “Someday?” Will whispers.</p><p>    Hannibal looks away, retreating into his own mind for a brief moment. “It will only be worth it if you eventually deem it so. I have orchestrated and executed elaborate designs to bring you to a point of fulfilment I felt you deserved, but that you deny yourself based on the taboos of this so called ‘civilisation’. Knowing it could cost me my life, or cost you yours.”</p><p>   Will swallows, and his heart seems to swell uncomfortably – is this a permanent expansion, or a prelude to rupturing? Can it accommodate the strain, or will it burst to paint his insides with the tattered red shreds of the once vital organ.</p><p>   “I still want to be a good man.” Will hisses. His eyes prickle with tears.</p><p>   “And you cannot see me as a good man?”</p><p>   “It would take a very distorted lens to see you as a good man.” Will’s tone is kinder than his words, but the statement wounds. Hannibal seems to gather himself in a little, covering the vulnerable flesh. “But I know, on some level, that you’re not all bad.” He offers a little smile here.</p><p>   Hannibal’s eyes soften again. “But you still wish to be ‘all good’?”</p><p>   “I know I’m not. But, that doesn’t mean I should just cast aside whatever <em>inconveniences </em>me… and… what about Abigail?”</p><p>   He sees a trace of confusion at the non sequitur, and clarifies, “Leading me to abandon conventional morality is one thing, but encouraging Abigail, grooming her…” Will trails off distastefully.</p><p>    Taking a sip of whiskey then placing the glass down on the side table with a faint ‘clack’, Hannibal leaned towards Will fully.</p><p>    “Abigail was nearly an adult when we came into her life, Will. Whether nature or nurture, those instincts were already ingrained in her. I acknowledge this without judging her for it, and she returns the courtesy. It is often the case that we judge others the most harshly for the traits we dislike in ourselves.”</p><p>    Would discourtesy bring an unbearable weight of shame to Hannibal? Was that why he wantonly killed the rude? Did Will judge Abigail for the shame he held tight to his chest?</p><p>     If he accepted himself, it would be easier to accept Abigail and Hannibal. He licks his lips and drops his gaze into his drink. “One can not be delusional if the belief in question is accepted as ordinary by others in that person’s culture or subculture.”</p><p>    “Or family.” Hannibal adds, finishing his own statement from Minnesota, all those months ago.</p><p><em>So few grains of happiness, <br/></em><em>Measured against all the dark, <br/></em><em>And still the scales balance</em>.<br/> <br/>    Will blinks, not entirely sure how he came to be standing. But now that he is, he follows his urge to sit beside Hannibal on the couch, leaving a safe distance between them. He stares down at the sofa cushion for a minute, then twists and reaches out and to grip both of Hannibal’s arms.</p><p>   “I do accept you. And I do accept Abigail. And I might… one day accept the part of me that we share in common. But when – <em>if </em>– I do, it has to be under my own power. No more whispering into the chrysalis. No more manipulation. Can you do that?”</p><p>    Hannibal places a single finger under Will’s chin and lifts his head.</p><p>    “Unfortunately, Will, I cannot promise you that. You and I are too intelligent and perceptive to avoid anticipating the outcomes of different actions. However, I can promise you that I will refrain from effecting any grand secret schemes that directly involve you.”</p><p>   Scoffing, Will lifts his chin free and rolls his eyes. “That’s entirely slippery. But, reassuringly honest.”</p><p>    “I will aim to be transparent,” Hannibal murmurs, leaning in, a glint in his eye, “but it is not in my nature.”</p><p>     Will’s mouth curls up at the edges, heat and want gathering below his skin. “You’re doing pretty well at the moment.”</p><p>    “Thank you.” Hannibal closes the distance and presses their mouths together; Will pushes back in with receptive lips.</p><p>   The clothes come off easily this time, hardly noticed as they’re discarded, the kissing an ebullient fire of communication, communion, and consumption.</p><p>     It’s Will who leads them to the camp bed in the corner, who digs out a bottle of coconut oil, fretting briefly over whether it has an expiry date, before Hannibal calmly takes his hand and leads him back into the kiss. He is sitting on the edge of the bed, and Will drops the bottle and climbs astride him, stroking his tongue against the other, running his fingers through Hannibal’s hair. He’s not kissed down into him like this before, and if he wasn’t fully hard before he’s certainly throbbing to attention now.</p><p>     He groans into Hannibal’s mouth, fingers moving over his cheekbones, his jawline, back into his hair, enjoying the wet slide of tongues and the heat radiating from Hannibal’s body.</p><p>     When Will draws slightly back to pull in some successive breaths of air, Hannibal’s blown pupils gaze intently into him. “What is the lubricant for, Will?”</p><p>     Will shivers at the word ‘lubricant’ in Hannibal’s mouth. There are a lot of things he wants from Hannibal’s mouth. He lifts his fingers to play at the man’s bruised lips.</p><p>    “I’ve reached my decision, from last night.”</p><p>    “Ah, to fuck, or to be fucked? That is the question—Whether 'tis nobler in body to endure the slings and arrows of outrageous pleasure, Or to take ones own in the valley of tight hot bliss?”</p><p>     Will starts to grind against Hannibal, astonished and delighted by the profanities. “Did you just massively misquote Shakespeare at me?”</p><p>   “I think you know I would cross many lines of common decency with you.”</p><p>    Another groan, and then, “Fuck me. I want you to fuck me.”</p><p>    He had been with women, he knows what it is to drive into soft responsive tissue, <em>it’s great, </em>but he wants to experience Hannibal in all his masculine power, wants to take him inside and <em>feel </em>him there, wants to survive him.</p><p>     Loosing a growl, Hannibal twists them around, pressing Will’s back into the sheets and landing on top of him. His mask is back in place immediately, but the brief glimpse of his feral desire has Will leaking the first drops of precome.</p><p>    Hannibal must notice the gathering moisture, because his eyes dart down and a slow smile moves lazily across his face. “Do you mind if I taste you first?”</p><p>    Will whimpers faintly in assent, and Hannibal kisses down his stomach.</p><p>   “Just a little taste.” He assures, before licking from the base of his cock up to the glistening tip, and swallowing the head.</p><p>   Will arches in response, bottom lip pinned between his teeth, but it barely muffles the ‘ah’ that escapes him. Hannibal remains there, gently suckling, lathing with his tongue, as he reaches for the bottle of oil on the bed.</p><p>   The sight and sensation of Hannibal’s mouth pertly sucking on the tip of his engorged cock is antagonising in its slow build; if Hannibal kept this up for long enough, he could probably come like this – and that might be something to try one day – but tonight he wants… The cap of the lubricant pops off, and <em>yes, yes </em>that’s what Will is waiting for.</p><p>    A tremble of fresh pleasure slides through him as a warm glossy finger brushes against his perineum, rubs a light circle there, and then presses up between his cheeks to rest – ever so gently – against his hole. Will tenses reflexively, and Hannibal hums a soothing note around his glans, sending little thrills through the organ.</p><p>      Hannibal massages around the puckered opening, allowing Will time to adjust to the new sensation. When he deems enough time has passed, he bows his head forward and takes Will’s whole length into his mouth, and as he hollows his mouth and pulls back, he slides the tip of one finger inside.</p><p>      His impending orgasm is suddenly rushing closer with much greater rapidity. “Wooah, careful.” Will slaps at the mattress with a hand, and Hannibal retreats the finger, eyes large and looking innocent and concerned, mouth still working at the head of Will’s cock. “No, it’s fine, it’s good… it’s just, if you keep sucking me while you prep me I’m gonna come before we’ve gone anywhere.”  </p><p>    Reluctantly drawing his lips back with a final appreciative suckle, Hannibal licks his lips and presses a kiss to Will’s thigh. “You must forgive me.” He murmurs into the soft flesh. “I’ve been wanting to taste you again all day.”</p><p>    He returns to pressing kisses into the trembling flesh of Will’s thigh. The warm finger slides back in to the soft tissue between his cheeks, gently easing into the ring of muscle, questing further. A strange stretch and pressure, in a passage he has rarely considered, but that seems to welcome Hannibal’s finger as though its introduction is the most natural thing in the world. Will squirms, testing the feel of Hannibal exploring inside him. He discovers it feels pretty good, actually.</p><p>     He presses back, reminding himself to stay relaxed, stomach muscles quivering with displaced tension. Hannibal makes an approving noise in the back of his throat, then begins to slide the finger back and forth, gently teething and lipping at Will’s inner thigh as his eyes study Will’s reactions to the stimulus.<br/> <br/>    “How are you feeling, Will?” <em>How does that make you feel, Will?  </em>Words old and new meet in his mind, meld.</p><p>     “I feel…” <em>pretty goddamn weird, but also… </em>“impatient.” He grinds down, taking more of Hannibal’s finger into him. It stings a little, but it’s satisfying and somehow comforting, and he’s already far too turned on to care about the pain.</p><p>    The lube cap pops open again, and the finger withdraws. He thinks he knows what this means. Sure enough, two fingers return to his hole, repeat the process of soothing circles at the rim, and the one finger slides in, out, in further, and in the next pass, two fingers are pushing in.</p><p>    It’s a lot, pressure blossoming deeper inside him as the digits sink in and he feels knuckles against his rim and then – he gasps – a jolt of electricity as a finger lightly grazes a live wire inside him, briefly closing a connection that appears connected to his vocal chords. Quite beyond his ability to control, he warbles out a modulated note, voice breaking at the end.</p><p>    Hannibal’s mouth curves up at the sides in undisguised delight. “Oh, Will”, Hannibal presses his face into Will’s open thighs, then tilts his head slightly to brush his cheek against the very active gage of Will’s arousal. “What lovely music you make.” He laps the fresh glistening beads of precome, before retreating as requested. Will whines mournfully at the brevity of the contact there. Hannibal purrs, “Yes, my love, I’m going to make you sing.”</p><p>    The fingers draw back a little, scissor gently, then the brush against his prostate returns, and another warbling breath punches out of Will, but the stretch and connect inside him fills all the available space in his mind, and he hasn’t the space to care. Hannibal’s eyes are burning into him, gathering every chirp and wail, savouring the shudder of distress when he pulls his fingers completely out… Will growls with the emptiness. Then three fingers are pushing in, and he’s panting, because this feels like <em>a lot</em>, and there’s still more to come; it’s so much, and he’s so hard, and he still feels <em>impatient</em>.</p><p>    He resolutely pushes back, jaw stretched open and eyes pressed shut <em>come on come on come on </em>as he tries to keep one part of him relaxed as the rest tenses up with desperation.</p><p>    “Sssh Will, it’s best to go slow your first time.”</p><p>    Will growls and rolls his hips for the first time. He lets out another sing-song sigh as Hannibal’s three fingers slide further in and hit against his prostate. “This <em>is </em>slow.” He undulates again, carefully and deliberately fucking himself on Hannibal’s clustered fingers, and Hannibal looks too enchanted to form a response.</p><p>    When Will goes still again, his eyes harden, and Hannibal obeys the implied command.</p><p>    The fingers retract to a shaky exhale from Will, his cock leaking and deeply flushed.</p><p>    “Do you have condoms, Will?”</p><p>    “Hannibal, we’re conjoined. We’ll bleed together, die together. I’ll not have anything between us." </p><p>     Hannibal presses fresh kisses to Will’s thighs and the join of his hip and then stands. He puts the bottle of lubricant on the bedside table, one cupped hand going to his own thick erection, coating the waiting instrument in shiny oil.</p><p>    The smell of coconut brings back memories of sun-cream on the dock, but all such thoughts drop away as Hannibal begins to crawl towards him on the bed. Between his legs, his manhood rides proudly, a spear levelled with intent. </p><p>    <em>Oh my god oh my god oh my god. </em>This is really happening. Dr Hannibal fucking Lecter is about to penetrate him, sodomise him, and he is trembling in fervent anticipation.</p><p>     The doctor pauses above Will, looking down with sombre eyes, the magnitude of this moment written into the lines of his face; vague incredulity, vulnerability, thundering need. He reaches behind Will and procures one of the two lumpy pillows, lifting his hips up and sliding the cushion in place to keep him canted.</p><p>   With this achieved, Hannibal lowers himself to press into a reverent kiss. Will enjoys kissing Hannibal, but this isn't the moment for tenderness. He pinches Hannibal's lip between his teeth, <em>get on with it.</em> Hannibal grins ruefully, testing his lip for blood, then setting his cock to rest, firm and slick, against Will’s perineum. He guides it down between Will’s cheeks, and Will sucks in a ragged gasp of air as he feels it, hot against his opening.</p><p>     Hannibal is so close, pressed up all around him, pressed up against him, not crushing, but omnipresent. Now, the muscles shift and the heat pushes <em>in</em>, and Will’s fingers come to up to bury themselves on the meat of Hannibal’s shoulders. “Deeper.” He hisses.</p><p>    Biceps straining as he holds himself over Will, Hannibal slowly advances, the pressure increasing and spreading up through him, inch by inch. Will’s eyes flutter wildly as he fights to keep them open and fixed on the inferno of Hannibal’s scrutinous gaze, while his flesh is parted and his body filled. When Hannibal’s thighs hit the back of his legs, they both take a moment to blink at each other in dazed wonder. Above him, lips parted, some strands of hair fallen loose, Hannibal draws in deep measured breaths; Will feels each exhalation deep inside him. </p><p>    “M-move. You can move.”</p><p>     He does, slow thrusts that lance him with pain and pleasure, until the pain fades or melds with the pleasure to become something new, something other.</p><p>  “More, want more. Want you deeper. Ah.”</p><p>  “Insatiable creature. I would have to turn you around.”</p><p>   “Then turn me, fucking turn me. I want as much of you as you can give me.”</p><p>    Even so he whines as Hannibal pulls out. Once freed, he wastes no time, spinning around on the bed and backing up to present himself, nudging at Hannibal’s hip, feeling his slick cock slide against the other cheek. “C’mon, c’mon.”</p><p>    Hannibal kneels behind Will and takes him by the shoulders. Guiding him to sit back on his Hannibal’s thighs, he reintroduces the smooth bulb of his cockhead to the sensitive entrance to Will’s body, which shivers in response.</p><p>     “Lower yourself onto me Will, I’ll guide you.”</p><p>    Will is panting in loud heaving breaths as he slides himself down onto the impossible glorious girth of Hannibal’s erection, his own straining forward with howling need. Hannibal’s cock glides in with slow inevitability as Will’s weight propels him down. Fully sheathed in him, Hannibal is deeper than before; their legs tremble against each other with strain and elation.</p><p>    “Holy fuck holy fuck…” Will is gasping for air. Hannibal’s broad arms are wrapped tightly him, clasping chest and abdomen, and he rubs his rough cheek against Will’s back, whispering something unintelligible but flagrantly worshipful.</p><p>    He’s full, oh sweet Jesus, <em>he’s </em><em>so fucking full, </em>but he’s ready, <em>more than ready </em>to start moving again. Obstinately, Hannibal’s hips remain static, and the hold around his torso has him gripped exactly where he is: pinned on Hannibal’s phallus, locked in his embrace.</p><p>    He wriggles, writhing on Hannibal’s cock, desperate for new sensation, trying to rock even the merest degree. The negligible friction this grants him only drives his desperation higher. “Please Hannibal. God, please.”</p><p>   “Just one moment more, beloved, let me have you like this a moment longer.” Hannibal sounds broken, seated in Will, cradling him, as close to absorbing him, perhaps, as is physically possible. Will keens but relents, submitting to the hold, finding that Hannibal is able to slide a tiny fraction deeper when he does so.</p><p>    A sweeter softer edge oozes up the frantic hard surface of his pleasure, and he clutches Hannibal’s arms to his body, focusing solely on the fact of Hannibal <em>inside him. </em>He can feel Hannibal’s heartbeats through the pulsing of his cock trapped within. The man’s heat surrounds him and occupies him; he is engulfed in Hannibal, engulfing him in turn. Devoured and devouring.</p><p>    His hips twitch again, of their own volition, and the honeyed sensation spreads through him in a little ripple of bliss, and with a shaky exhale, that <em>need </em>comes flooding back.</p><p>   “Oh god Hannibal… please, I can’t… please…”</p><p>    Thankfully, Hannibal takes mercy on them both. He tilts them forward to put more weight on his knees. The shift in angle is enough to have Will cry out in relief, and then Hannibal begins to thrust - slowly, purposefully - and Will keeps crying out, again and again. The match of Hannibal’s cockhead striking the flint of Will’s prostate, sparking wave after wave of unfamiliar pleasure.</p><p>     He doesn’t need to ask Hannibal to go faster - and thank god because words are likely beyond him now. Hannibal steadily increases his pace, building momentum and force, his hands moving to grip different parts of Will’s hips and torso and shoulders as he fucks up into Will’s body.</p><p>    Will has braced himself on the bed, rutting back to meet each charge, and each time the length is fully embedded it drives another moan from his lungs. His dick bounces, leaking precome and as hard as he’s ever seen it. It’s begging to be touched, but Will worries he’ll come the moment anything so much as brushes up against it, and he’s not ready for this to end. Not now. Maybe not ever.</p><p>    Hannibal slips an arm under Will’s chest and pulls him upright again, his other hand to his throat in a gentle but possessive claim, and the sensations intensify.</p><p>   Will had never suspected he could be so loud during sex, but there’s no curtailing the noises spilling from his throat. Pleas and curses and whines and grunts, all stirred together in an obscene mess, just like Will’s mind.</p><p>      “I love you, Will. I love you.” Hannibal whispers against the back of his neck, and Will can’t manage much more than a faint <em>‘Rrrr’</em> in response before the hips snap with fresh resolve and abandon and Will is almost screaming. He comes, and Hannibal snarls out a low growl as he follows suit, spilling into the tight space he’s made of Will. The hot spear housed inside him throbs deliciously with each after-shock of Hannibal’s climax.</p><p>     Hannibal’s hand comes around to tenderly stroke Will’s own overlooked cock, which twitches gratefully in his palm. His lingering orgasm is milked out of him, and they shudder and breathe together.</p><p>    It takes them a while to separate, and when they clean up together there’s a lingering astonishment between them, neither of them quite able to believe the intensity of what they have just shared. They grin at each other while they brush their teeth, a little bashful, a little awed.</p><p>    Curled together with the lamps turned out, Will nuzzles close. “I love you too, you know.” He can feel Hannibal smile in the dark. “And… I have a poem for you too.” His own eidetic memory had supplied it, as he walked his neural paths casting about on the subject of forgiveness. Delivered without fanfare, slipped into his pocket by his subconscious, the words fitting so naturally to the situation that he barely noticed them at first.</p><p>    “I would love to hear it.”</p><p>     Can he do this? Open up completely the way Hannibal had? Loving him was easy, he may not have admitted it to himself, but it had been there since the first revelation of Hannibal’s own ardour. But forgiving him… truly moving beyond it all? He wants to, and wanting to forgive is surely the first step. This poem will show Hannibal he’s trying to, at least.</p><p>    “It’s from an American poet.”</p><p>   “So we have each selected a poet from our homelands to represent us. That seems appropriate.”</p><p>    “Perhaps. I don’t know if it’s quite as fitting as yours, I think I read less poetry. But… It resonates.”</p><p>     “We can ask no more from our poets.”</p><p>     “It’s by Jane Hirshfield, and it’s called ‘The Weighing’.” Now it appears it is he who is prevaricating, he rifles through his mental indexes to find more biographical information on the poet. “The article I read said she was influenced by Eastern European poets, so perhaps it’s more relevant than I first thought.”</p><p>    Hannibal’s lips find his jaw and he plants a reassuring kiss there. </p><p>    “Whenever you’re ready Will.”</p><p>    He clears his throat. He’s not the natural orator that Hannibal is. When he starts to speak, there’s a waver of timidity in his voice, but as the poem takes control of his tongue, his recitation grows in certainty.<br/><br/></p><p><em>“ ‘The heart’s reasons<br/></em> <em>Seen clearly,<br/></em> <em>Even the hardest<br/></em> <em>Will carry<br/></em> <em>Its whip-marks and sadness<br/></em> <em>And must be forgiven.</em> </p><p><em>As the drought-starved<br/></em> <em>Eland forgives<br/></em> <em>The drought-starved lion</em></p><p><em>Who finally takes her,<br/></em> <em>Enters willingly then<br/></em> <em>The life she cannot refuse,<br/></em> <em>And is lion, is fed,<br/></em> <em>And does not remember the other.</em> </p><p><em>So few grains of happiness<br/></em> <em>Measured against all the dark<br/></em> <em>And still the scales balance.</em> </p><p><em>The world asks of us<br/></em> <em>Only the strength we have and we give it.<br/></em> <em>Then it asks more, and we give it.’”</em></p><p>Hannibal caresses the back of Will’s neck while he speaks, and finishing the poem, they let the words drift in the dark with them. This poem is simpler than Hannibal’s had been, less aureate; a few choice literary conceits instead of the deep well of imagery that the Lithuanian poet had employed. But maybe that’s apt too, in so far as it reflects Will’s own style of communication.<br/><br/>    “Are you the eland, beloved?”<br/><br/>    “I was the eland, but having been devoured, I’m the lion now.”<br/><br/>   A fresh kiss to his jaw. “I am sorry your consumption was so painful.” An apology? An actual apology, offered after clemency has already been offered. How entirely Hannibal. “But I am delighted to have you in my pride.”<br/><br/>   “There’s no pride Hannibal.” He’s gentle with his correction, factual. “You devoured me, you devoured Abigail… we’re all part of the same lion.”<br/><br/>     Hannibal hums and moves to nose at Will’s jugular. “At least the drought has ended. No more eland need be brought down.”<br/><br/>   “Just the lesser antelope?”<br/><br/>   “As and when the hunger strikes – but there will be no more starvation. That, I can promise you.”<br/><br/>    Will smiles, knowing it’s true. The lion is sated now, healthy and well fed. They all look out through its golden eyes and see the same world laid bare before them. A world that would rather they didn’t exist; a world that doesn’t get a say in the matter.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>...And that really is it folks, although I might write another drabble or two if anyone has any particular requests. </p><p>Thank you so much for reading 'til the end! This really is a great fanship, and y'all get hugs for your comments and kudos - if you like hugs of course, otherwise it's a respectful nod.</p><p>If you're up for another canon divergence, I'm working on <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/27083143/chapters/66129478">this S03 one </a>now, where Will follows the wrong train track and ends up in a Florence haunted by Il Monstro, two decades before the Ripper ever struck America.</p>
        </blockquote><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Please let me know if you enjoy, your kudos and comments bring light to the dark corners of my world ;)</p><p>and oO-er, this is my first time trying to write smut, so I hope the NSFW chapters pass muster! Also my first time writing a whole piece in the present tense, so I hope it's ok :/</p></blockquote></div></div>
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